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Bulgarian Jews skipped an official ceremony marking 80 years since their rescue from the Nazis. Why?
(JTA) — Bulgaria’s president was on hand on Friday for a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the country’s dramatic decision to save its 48,000 Jews from the Nazis.
So were representatives of the Bulgarian Orthodox church whose predecessors instigated the rescue, as well as a prominent Bulgarian-born Israeli historian and politician, Michael Bar Zohar, who published an early history of the episode, which was barely known until after the fall of communism.
Together they marched from Bulgaria’s national library — where an exhibition about Bulgaria’s World War II-era king, Tsar Boris III, is being held — to Sofia’s oldest church, where they lay flowers on a memorial to Boris and his wife, Tsarina Joanna.
But conspicuously absent from the ceremony with President Rumen Radev were any representatives of Bulgaria’s contemporary Jewish community,
Community leaders were invited only at the last possible minute, on Thursday afternoon, according to Alexander Oscar, president of Shalom The Organization of Bulgarian Jews. His group had already planned its own observance of March 10, known by Bulgarian Jews as “Day of Salvation.”
But Oscar said he would not have attended even if he’d been invited earlier — and he thought no one else from the local Jewish community would have either.
“Nobody from the community would have taken part in an event honoring the imaginary role of King Boris in rescuing the Bulgarian Jews and presenting a distorted history of the Holocaust,” Oscar told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Oscar’s comments point to a longstanding and increasingly potent dispute over how Tsar Boris III should factor into Bulgaria’s Holocaust memory. Though Boris did sign off on the order to halt the deportation of the country’s Jews, he was also the leader of a fascist government that allied with Nazi Germany, imposed oppressive racial laws on its Jews and facilitated the murder of more than 11,000 Jews in territory it occupied. Boris died under mysterious circumstances shortly after returning from Germany where he met with Hitler in 1943.
Bulgarian troops deported more than 11,000 Jews living in Western Thrace, Vardar, Macedonia and the town of Pirot in today’s Serbia to Nazi death camps, where almost all were murdered.
St. Sophia Church, where the president’s ceremony took place, is home to plaques honoring Tsar Boris III and his wife that briefly stood in Jerusalem’s Bulgarian Forest. The plaques were removed in 2000 after protests by Bulgarian Jews and their descendants who were uncomfortable with lionizing someone who oversaw the murder of Jews during the Holocaust.
Past “Day of Salvation” commemorations have not specifically exalted Boris. But the wartime leader is a favorite of Bulgaria’s far right and those who admire the country’s pre-communist governments, and his profile has only risen in recent years as Bulgaria, like many other countries, has experienced a strengthening of its right wing.
“What we choose to remember and what we choose to omit when telling our own story is a mark of wisdom, courage and dignity,” wrote Bulgarian Jewish journalist Emmy Barouh in an open letter to Radev before the commemoration event.
“There is no morality to be found in the sinister arithmetic that the lives of 50,000 were ‘paid for’ by the lives of 11,343,” Barouh wrote. “Skipping half of this sad ‘equation’ turns ‘80th anniversary of the rescue’ into another episode of political use of Bulgarian Jews.”
Immediately after the war, the Jewish population of Bulgaria was still about 50,000, its prewar level, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. But unlike in most communist countries, the government allowed Jews to emigrate in large numbers and in fact encouraged them to do so; the vast majority departed for Israel in the late 1940s. Today, the World Jewish Congress estimates the country’s Jewish population at between 2,000 and 6,000; the country recently saw the creation of a Jewish school in Sofia and a cultural center in the remains of a crumbling synagogue in the coastal city of Vidin.
The former sanctuary of the central synagogue in Vidin, Bulgaria, built in 1894, is today crumbling and missing a roof. (Jonah Goldman Kay)
Local Jewish leaders marked the anniversary in other ways. Earlier in the week, some traveled to Kavala, Greece, for a ceremony at the site where Bulgarian soldiers deported thousands of Jews to Treblinka in 1943. On Friday, they also held their own ceremony at a different monument in Sofia commemorating both the rescue and the murder of the Jews in Bulgarian-occupied regions. They were joined by public figures including Sofia’s mayor and Bulgaria’s foreign minister, Nikolay Milkov, and its prosecutor general.
Some Bulgarians had openly called for their country to pay greater homage to Tsar Boris III at this year’s March 10 commemorations. Daniela Gortcheva, a Dutch-Bulgarian right-wing media figure, circulated a petition calling for him to be recognized.
The petition asserted that leaving Boris out of the commemoration would be akin to what happened in the Macedonian city of Ohrid last year, when a Bulgarian cultural club named after Boris drew protests from those who noted that Boris’s government was responsible for the murder of thousands of Macedonian Jews.
That incident, the latest in a long-running conflict between the two Balkan nations over World War II history, rocketed Tsar Boris back into the national spotlight in Bulgaria and made his rehabilitation a focus of Bulgarian nationalists.
After Jewish groups rebuffed the petition, Gortcheva attacked her critics on Facebook as ungrateful “heirs of Communists,” “a fifth column of Moscow” and traitors — claims that Jewish leaders say echo antisemitic smears made against Jews in the past.
Shalom, Bulgarian Jewry’s leading organization, has filed a complaint against Gortcheva with Bulgaria’s prosecutor general — the same official who last month ruled that Bulgaria could bar a neo-Nazi march honoring a Nazi collaborator.
“Gortcheva — a great supporter of the Lukov march — has been persistently involved in the spread of Holocaust denial and distortion,” World Jewish Congress Executive Vice President Maram Stern said in a letter to Milkov. “She combines such statements with slanderous claims that the Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria SHALOM and the Organization of the Bulgarian Jews in Israel are disloyal to Bulgaria.”
Following last week’s ceremonies, a group of Bulgarian scholars have circulated their own appeal this week, calling on Bulgarian leaders to acknowledge the deportations of Jews under the country’s rule during the Holocaust.
“Our state never tried to find the appropriate language to mark two inseparable and yet antipodal historical facts: the preserved life of the Jews from the prewar territories of Bulgaria and the deportation to Treblinka (4-29 March 1943) of those from the lands occupied in April 1941,” the appeal reads. “The Bulgarian state should acknowledge publicly, sincerely and unconditionally its responsibility by apologizing for the persecutions and deportations of Jews during World War II.”
“It is a matter of basic decency and tactfulness that emphasizing the salvation should be done by those who were saved and not by the savior,” the petition added. “Here, exactly the opposite occurs: Bulgarians are engaging in self-glorification and inviting the Jewish community to pay them eternal gratitude.”
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Trump Threatens to Hit Iran ‘Very Hard’ if More Protesters Killed as Supreme Leader Said to Be Prepared to Flee
Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Dec. 29, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
US President Donald Trump on Sunday evening warned Iran that it will get “hit very hard” if the regime kills more protesters, as anti-government demonstrations enter a second week and the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is reportedly preparing an escape amid rising domestic unrest.
“We’re watching [the situation] very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Trump’s latest threat comes after he warned last week that Washington will intervene if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters.”
Sparked by a shopkeepers’ strike in Tehran last week, protests have swept the country, sparked by the soaring cost of living, a worsening economic crisis, and the rial — Iran’s currency — plunging to record lows in the wake of renewed United Nations sanctions.
For more than one week, anti-regime protests have shaken Iran, with violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces escalating amid intensifying domestic crises.
On Saturday, Khamenei accused “enemies of the Islamic Republic” of stoking unrest and warned that “rioters should be put in their place,” Iranian media reported.
Iran’s judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, also said that while citizens have a right to protest, the government will show no leniency toward “rioters.”
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI), protests have spread to at least 78 cities, with the regime killing 20 people — including three children — arresting nearly 1,000, and detaining more than 40 minors.
Amid a deepening economic crisis worsened by a 12-day June war with Israel and the US that struck several of Iran’s nuclear sites, the regime has ramped up its crackdown on protesters and opposition figures trying to maintain stability.
Media reports indicate that anti-riot forces — including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij militia, local police, and the army — have used violent tactics such as live fire, tear gas, and water cannons to suppress demonstrations.
In widely circulated social media videos, protesters can be heard chanting slogans such as “Death to the dictator” and “Khamenei will be toppled this year,” while also calling for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to step down.
Videos sent to Iran International show security forces confronting protesting shopkeepers in central Tehran on Monday, with riot police deployed around the Grand Bazaar and tear gas used on Jomhouri Street near the Hafez underpass. pic.twitter.com/OyhQlyUJaN
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) December 29, 2025
Meanwhile, Khamenei reportedly has a backup plan to flee the country if his security forces fail to suppress protests or begin to desert, according to The Times.
“The ‘plan B’ is for Khamenei and his very close circle of associates and family, including his son and nominated heir apparent, Mojtaba,” an intelligence source told the British newspaper.
Khamenei would reportedly flee to Moscow, following the path of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
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Pro-Hamas Arson Attack Targets Home of Antisemitism Commissioner in Germany
An image of arson and vandalism near the home of Andreas Büttner, commissioner for combating antisemitism in the German state of Brandenburg. Photo: Screenshot
Investigators in Germany have started reviewing an arson attack on Sunday against the home of Andreas Büttner, commissioner for combating antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg, where assailants set fire to a shed at his property in Templin — a town located approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — and spray-painted an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
“My thoughts are with Andreas Büttner and his family,” Israeli Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor posted on X. “Knowing him as I do, after this attack he will only stand up even more resolutely against antisemitism. For the radical part of the ‘Palestine solidarity’ movement is not only antisemitic, but terrorist.”
Prosor explained the significance of the red triangle, writing, “Attacks on those who think differently and attempted murder: That is what the Hamas triangle stands for — in Gaza as in Brandenburg. And the hatred of Israel goes hand in hand with hatred of our democracy. The rule of law must smash these terrorist organizations — and indeed, before they strike again.”
The red triangle vandalism appeared “on the neighboring house’s door entrance,” according to Germany’s DW media.
The home of Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Andreas Büttner, was set on fire overnight in a targeted attack.
His family was inside the house at the time.
This is the second attack against Büttner in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas. This… pic.twitter.com/cAbFnMIwQ7
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) January 5, 2026
“The symbol speaks a clear language. The red Hamas triangle is an internationally known sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement,” Büttner said. “Anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest, it is a threat.”
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the arson, the second attack against him in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas.
Büttner released a statement on X.
“This attack represents a massive escalation,” he wrote. “It is directed against me personally, against my family, and against my home. At the same time, it is an expression of hatred and intimidation. I will not be intimidated by this. Anyone who believes that they can achieve something through violence, arson, or threats is mistaken. Such acts do not lead to me becoming quieter or questioning my commitment — they strengthen me in what I do. I ask that you give us the necessary peace today and refrain from further inquiries at the present time.”
Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke also condemned the violence, saying that “violence against people or things is and remains absolutely unacceptable. The police have started the investigation, and I hope that the perpetrator or perpetrators will be caught quickly.”
Jochen Feilcke, chairman of the German-Israeli Society Berlin and Brandenburg, described the attack “as where Hamas’s terrorism was applied on a small scale, including the Hamas triangle, in order to ultimately intimidate all people who defend themselves against increasing antisemitism in Berlin and Brandenburg.”
“Especially the parties of the left camp have every reason to deal with it, because they tolerate this mood or still fuel it,” Feilcke told Tagesspiegel. “They are so jointly responsible for when debates turn into violence.””
The Jewish Virtual Library describes how the inverted red triangle symbol was originally used by the Nazis to designate political prisoners.
“According to Holocaust historians, this triangle was part of a dehumanizing classification system, where each prisoner was identified by different colored triangles depending on their ‘crime,’” writes Or Shaked, deputy director of the Jewish Virtual Library. “The red triangle identified political dissidents, including socialists and communists. After World War II, the survivors of Nazi persecution and their families reclaimed the red triangle as a symbol of resistance to fascism.”
Shaked explains the revival of the symbol in recent years, noting that following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the symbol began appearing in Hamas-produced propaganda, marking Israeli military targets. Its use spread to anti-Israel protests, particularly on college campuses and social media, where demonstrators use it to show solidarity with Palestinians.
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Orthodox Jewish Judge to Preside Over Maduro Trial in New York
US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein presides at the Manhattan Federal Court hearing over former US President Donald Trump’s push to move his criminal case to federal court, in New York City, US, June 27, 2023, in a courtroom sketch. Photo: Jane Rosenberg via Reuters Connect
The US federal judge presiding over the criminal proceedings of deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro is an Orthodox Jew from New York City whose 70 years as a legal professional has seen him work on a slew of major cases with historic implications, touching on matters from the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the felony convictions of Donald Trump.
Born in 1933 — a year in which Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the US presidency, Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, and the British Broadcasting Corporation aired the first ever televised boxing match — the future US district judge Alvin Kenneth Hellerstein graduated from Columbia Law School in 1956, the third year of the first Eisenhower administration and the year of the Suez Crisis.
Forty-two years later, after serving as a law clerk, achieving first lieutenant rank in the US Army, and becoming partner at the Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, Hellerstein was appointed to the federal bench by former US President Bill Clinton in 1998 at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a first of its kind cable media event in which Clinton was accused of carrying on a torrid extramarital affair with a White House intern.
On Monday, Hellerstein lived through another moment of major historical significance, as he arraigned Maduro on narcoterrorism charges stemming from a federal indictment which alleges that he operated a gargantuan drug trafficking operation while administering a dictatorship over Venezuela.
Maduro was transported to New York City by the US military and federal law enforcement agents following an operation to extract him from Venezuela during the early morning hours of Jan. 3. He has since been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, whose list of recent high-profile inmates include Sam Bankman-Fried, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Ghislaine Maxwell.
“I was captured at my home in Caracas, Venezuela,” Maduro, joined by his wife and alleged co-conspirator Cilia Flores, told Hellerstein when asked to confirm his name in court on Monday. “I am a decent man. I am still president of my country.”
Hellerstein responded, “There will be a time and a place to go into all of this.” He later notified Maduro of his right to remain silent and authorized the requests of the deposed leader and his wife to receive medical attention.
Maduro’s capture was described by the Trump administration as both a law enforcement action and an application of the Roosevelt Corollary, in which the US assumes the right to secure and stabilize the Western Hemisphere by directly intervening in the domestic affairs of states within it. The policy has shown several faces since its first utterance as the Monroe Doctrine which opposed European colonialism in the hemisphere, and in accordance with it the US has staged actions in Cuba, Haiti, and Grenada.
Hellerstein’s tenure as a federal judge has been eventful. Sept. 11, 2001, victims, narcoterrorists, presidents, and the US government all have sought favorable rulings in his courtroom. In one of his more recent cases, he presided over the trial of Charlie Javice, who was convicted of defrauding JPMorgan Chase of $175 million dollars by duping the firm, one of the oldest and most important in the history of US finance, into believing that she had discovered a way to “simplify” the process for college students to apply for student financial aid. A jury convicted Javice, and Hellerstein sentenced her to 85 months in prison.
As a former president and candidate for the White House, Trump asked Hellerstein to transfer a criminal case alleging that he paid money to quell accusations of an extramarital affair from state court to federal court, a request Hellerstein repelled twice.
Hellerstein has also ruled against the second Trump administration’s attempt to deport alleged illegal migrants of Venezuelan origin under the Alien Enemies Act and detain them in El Salvador, where they would await repatriation. Hellerstein argued that the administration failed to show cause and settled on a different remedy.
“The destination, El Salvador, a country paid to take our aliens, is neither the country from which the aliens came, nor to which they wish to be removed,” Hellerstein wrote in his decision, issued in May amid of flurry of actions taken by new president. “But they are taken there, and there to remain, indefinitely, in a notoriously evil jail, unable to communicate with counsel, family, or friends.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.