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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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In ‘The Secret Agent,’ a peek into Brazilian Jewish history — and a warning against propaganda
When we first meet Marcelo in the fiction film The Secret Agent, the only thing that’s clear is that he’s on the run — we’re not sure that Marcelo is his real name, who he’s on the run from, or why. As the story, set in 1977 Brazil, unravels, we learn government officials and hired killers are working together to take Marcelo down and strip him of any credibility he had in his pre-fugitive life — even if that means manipulating the press.
But the film also spends time on the characters Marcelo meets while hiding among others being persecuted by the military dictatorship in the city of Recife, illustrating the diversity of the people affected by the fascist regime.
One of those characters is a man many assume is an escaped Nazi; in fact, however, he is a Holocaust survivor.
The audience’s introduction to the survivor, Hans, played by German actor Udo Kier in his final film role before his death, is not a pleasant one. A corrupt police chief named Euclides brings Marcelo to Hans’ tailor shop, insisting there is something interesting he must see there. Euclides then forces Hans to lift his shirt and show his scars — something Euclides clearly regularly has the man to do as we can see by Hans’ immediate sour reaction to the chief.
Euclides believes the intense, sprawling scar tissue tells a glorious military story of a Nazi who evaded capture.
“He’s just fascinated with, I don’t know, maybe Nazi Germany, with the German soldier, or the idea of the German soldier,” explained director Kleber Mendonça Filho in a video interview. “And he seems to have a one track mind in terms of thinking that Hans, because he’s German, must have been a heroic soldier in the German army in the Second World War, which explains why he’s still alive.”
But, as the audience learns through a conversation Hans has with an employee in German — and a shot of the menorah he has tucked away in his office — he is actually a Jewish Holocaust survivor. His wounds are a testament to surviving violent antisemitism, not markers of fighting for militaristic ideals the police chief believes they share.
“Identity can be on your body,” Filho said. “In the scars that you have, in the tattoos that you have, in the way that you have collected physical experience throughout life.”
Like many of the elements in the film, the character of Hans was inspired by Filho’s own memories of growing up in Recife during the Brazilian military dictatorship, known for its violent suppression of media and political dissidents, that ruled the country from 1964-1985. Even though Filho was only 9 years old at the time the film is set, he remembers a lot from that time in his life, including an old Romanian tailor his father visited in the downtown area that they recreated in the film.
Filho combined this character from his life with the experience of growing up in an area with a strong Jewish presence. Recife was the site of Brazil’s first organized Jewish community, which consisted of Dutch Jews, who arrived with other Dutch colonialists, and Sephardic Jews escaping the Portuguese and Spanish Inquisitions. Between 1636 and 1640, these Jews built the first synagogue in the Americas, Kahal Zur Israel, which was turned into a museum in 2001.
In 1654, the Portuguese expelled Dutch Colonists and Jews from Brazil, but another wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe in the 1910s revitalized Recife’s Jewish population. Even though Filho isn’t Jewish, he had a lot of Jewish friends throughout his life, even styling the marine biologist in the film off of one of them.
Although The Secret Agent takes place in 1977, Filho saw events similar to those he wrote into the film play out around him under the presidency of Jair Messias Bolsonaro, which lasted from 2019 to 2023.
Filho said that “a lot of the logic of what was happening under the Bolsonaro regime seemed to mimic” the military regime of the 20th century “in a fetishistic way.”
“Words like torture were now being thrown around,” he said, “misogynistic treatment of women in words that would be questionable in 1977 and completely alien and unacceptable today.”
Filho said the country also experienced a renewed period of racism and xenophobia under Bolsonaro, encouraged by the policies of the government. And those were sometimes overtly inspired by admiration for Nazi Germany; then-Special Secretary Roberto Alvim was removed from his post after just a few months for plagiarizing a speech from Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
Today, in the United States, many are worried that Nazis are being reimagined as the good guys, as Holocaust deniers like Nick Fuentes are given increased attention by news pundits and the Trump administration normalizes relations with the far-right groups.
Much of the plot of The Secret Agent concerns the rewriting of history through propaganda and media censorship. And the intimate and abusive interaction between the police chief and Hans feels like a particularly salient demonstration of how easily facts can be written over to fit the world someone might want to see.
The post In ‘The Secret Agent,’ a peek into Brazilian Jewish history — and a warning against propaganda appeared first on The Forward.
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Hamas’s Grip on Gaza NGOs Exposed as World Plans Post-War Rebuilding Efforts
Palestinians gather to collect aid supplies from trucks that entered Gaza, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
As world powers outline multi-billion-dollar plans to rebuild Gaza, newly obtained documents reveal that Hamas has long run a coordinated effort to penetrate and influence NGOs in the war-torn enclave — contradicting years of denials from major humanitarian organizations.
On Wednesday, NGO Monitor — an independent Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations — released a new study revealing how Hamas has for years systematically weaponized humanitarian aid in Gaza, tightening its grip over foreign NGOs operating in the territory and exposing patterns of complicity and collaboration that contradict the groups’ persistent denials.
While international media has repeatedly accused Israel of unfairly and illegally targeting humanitarian NGOs, Israeli officials have long argued that many of these groups have been infiltrated and manipulated by Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades — with the extent of NGO involvement far deeper than their public statements suggest.
Dozens of internal Hamas documents are now being published, providing systematic evidence and even detailing the officials tasked with coordinating and overseeing the Islamist group’s interactions with international NGOs.
According to the documents, Hamas officials designated specific points of contact with “highly respected” international NGOs, including Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, Save the Children, and the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Referred to as “guarantors,” these Hamas-approved senior officials at each NGO allowed the terrorist group to closely oversee activities, influence decision-making, and circumvent restrictions imposed by some Western governments on direct engagement with Hamas.
Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, said the newly released study offers a crucial guide for the US and its allies to vet aid partners, emphasizing the need to carefully screen NGOs to prevent a repeat of Hamas’s domination of Gaza’s reconstruction efforts.
“This research is timely and highly consequential,” Steinberg said in a statement. “Governments and international organizations are planning to provide billions of dollars for the rebuilding of Gaza, and will partner with numerous NGOs to reconstruct infrastructure, provide municipal services like utilities and education, and probably distribute cash payments.”
“We now know which NGOs and their local affiliates have been propping up the Hamas terror regime,” he continued.
The study also found that at least 10 “guarantors” — senior NGO officials — were not just Hamas-approved, but were also members, supporters, or employees of Hamas-affiliated authorities, who leveraged their positions in numerous NGOs to create Hamas-approved beneficiary lists for UN and other aid programs.
According to one of the obtained internal documents, Hamas conducted extensive surveillance of NGO officials in Gaza, noting that the “guarantors” across 48 NGOs “can be exploited for security purposes” to infiltrate foreign organizations and listing the names and personal details of 55 individuals already serving in those roles.
The document also explicitly outlines the terrorist organization’s intent to further develop or compel “guarantors” to serve as intelligence assets.
The findings appear to corroborate the concerns of many experts and Israeli officials, who have long said that Hamas steals much of the aid flowing into Gaza to fuel its terrorist operations and sells the remainder to Gaza’s civilian population at an increased price. Jerusalem has also said that aid distribution cannot be left to international organizations, which it accuses of allowing Hamas to seize supplies intended for the civilian population. According to UN data, the vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war was intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients.
With NGOs in Gaza — both local and international — required to secure Hamas’s approval to provide services and run projects, the report shows the group wields veto power over humanitarian operations, allowing it to control, manipulate, and exploit aid to advance its political and military objectives.
“NGO Monitor’s groundbreaking report proves that Hamas controls all humanitarian operations in Gaza, on an institutional level and an individual one,” Naftali Shavelson, NGO Monitor international spokesperson, said in a statement.
“There is no NGO freedom of operation in Gaza. And most crucially, never once did NGOs say anything about this Hamas infiltration,” he continued. “If anything, they issued statements blaming their inhibited operations on Israel – thus ignoring the problem and allowing Hamas to continue harming Gazans.”
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NYC principal turns down Holocaust survivor’s talk over his ‘messages around Israel and Palestine’
(JTA) — A New York City public school principal turned down a parent’s request to host a talk by Holocaust survivor Sami Steigmann, citing content in his presentation that related to “Israel and Palestine.”
In an email to the parent on Nov. 18, the principal of the Brooklyn middle school MS 447, Arin Rusch, said that she believed that hosting Steigman’s presentation was not “right” for the school.
“In looking at his website material, I also don’t think that Sami’s presentation is right for our public school setting, given his messages around Israel and Palestine,” Rusch wrote in an email obtained by the New York Post.
Rusch added that she would “love to explore other speakers” who could talk about the Holocaust and antisemitism. The Post did not name the parent.
Steigmann, 85, speaks frequently about his experiences as a child survivor of the Mogilev-Podolski labor camp from 1941 to 1944, according to his website. During the Holocaust, he was also subjected to Nazi medical experiments and starvation, though he says he does not remember the experiences. His website describes him as a motivational speaker “who lives to tell his story.”
While it was unclear what part of Steigmann’s website Rusch allegedly took issue with, Steigmann’s PowerPoint presentation, which is found on his site, features an Israeli flag as the backdrop of a number of slides.
There is also a slide labeled “Zionism,” which includes various assertions about the founding of Israel, including a definition that Zionism is the “Right of the Jewish people to feel safe and secure in their homeland” and a bullet point calling Zionism a “social justice movement for the Jewish people.”
In a video shared on Facebook by StandWithUs, a nonprofit that trains students in pro-Israel advocacy, Steigmann is seen urging the students to intern with the organization.
On Steigmann’s Instagram page he has also frequently reposted commentary on Israel and antisemitism, including one post from July where he wrote that “Palestine was Jewish before it became Israel.”
Steigmann told The Post that he believed it was wrong for Rusch to deny his presentation, adding that he doesn’t discuss Middle East politics in public schools and would have accommodated a request for him to avoid the subject.
“She didn’t even have the courtesy to call me,” Steigmann told The Post.
The rejection drew condemnation from The Blue Card, a nonprofit that supports Holocaust survivors and with which Steigmann is affiliated.
“It is outrageous that a Holocaust survivor was denied the chance to speak to students,” said Masha Pearl, the executive director of The Blue Note, in a statement. “His testimony as a child survivor of a Nazi labor camp is not political. It is history. Silencing him at a moment of rising antisemitism is dangerous and deeply wrong, and makes New York City less tolerant.”
Pearl also called on Rusch to meet with The Blue Note to discuss Holocaust education as well as on New York City Public Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos to “condemn this act and open an investigation.”
In a statement to the Post, the New York City Department of Education said that it evaluates every speaker to ensure they “maintain political neutrality.”
“We do not shy away from teaching history in our classrooms, and we are proud to have welcomed many Holocaust survivors into our schools, including MS 447, to share their stories. We thoroughly evaluate every classroom speaker and are careful to ensure speakers maintain political neutrality, especially on contentious current events, as required in a public school setting,” Department of Education spokeswoman Nicole Brownstein told The Post.
JTA sought comment from the NYC Department of Education, Mayor Eric Adams’s office and the principal, but did not receive responses.
Moshe Spern, the president of the United Jewish Teachers, an advocacy group. also criticized the rejection in an email on Nov. 26 to Brooklyn District 15 Superintendent Rafael Alvarez and aides for Aviles-Ramos.
“Although [Rusch] mentions that [she] would be open to other speakers, this begs the question of are we now censoring Holocaust survivors for their views on Israel,” wrote Spern. “This action by Principal Rusch is extremely inappropriate and I expect this situation to be remedied immediately.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adam’s office also told The Post that while he was committed to ensuring students hear from Holocaust survivors, Steigmann “wasn’t the right fit.”
“Mayor Adams is dedicated to ensuring all New Yorkers — particularly our students and young adults — hear stories from the genocide and oppression of the Holocaust, so we never again perpetrate such evil,” a City Hall spokesman told The Post. “While this speaker wasn’t the right fit, we will continue to ensure our students hear from the living survivors of this history into the future.”
The post NYC principal turns down Holocaust survivor’s talk over his ‘messages around Israel and Palestine’ appeared first on The Forward.