Stories We Were Not Told

We are seeking your support to produce “Stories We Were Not Told,” a book and a film about the Holocaust in Bulgaria. The project is based on the work of internationally acclaimed filmmaker Jacky Comforty and noted author and painter Martha Aladjem Bloomfield. Jacky, the son of Bulgarian Jewish survivors, has devoted his career to documenting the Bulgarian Jewish experience, and his oral histories, film and photography archives, research, and documentation of the topic have made him one of the world’s leading experts. Martha, also the child of Bulgarian survivors, has recently created a series of paintings inspired by eyewitness testimonies, and these will be incorporated into the project. This collaboration will be the latest of several award-winning productions that have brought the story of the Bulgarian Jews and its lessons for our time to international attention.

The paintings will be featured in a special exhibition in collaboration with the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida in 2025-2026.      

Concept
For many years the story of the Holocaust in Bulgaria was under-researched, under-represented and also overshadowed and manipulated by political and economical interests. A myth became popular that there was no Holocaust in Bulgaria. The Jewish story was never told as it was experienced by the people who lived and survived these times. 

The only documentation of this story is the one that was created by the perpetrators and reflects their views, prejudice, aesthetics and projections. Few archival photographs and films which exist depict deportation of Jews from the Bulgarian kingdom to Treblinka, via trains and river boats, in labor camps, and wearing the Jewish star. However, other dramatic or tragic events  were not documented or documentation was lost  or destroyed. War crimes happened in the dark. Perpetrators rarely document their crimes or keep records of atrocities. But testimonies of victims or eyewitnesses help us uncover hidden crimes and buried memories.

This book closes a gap between documented testimonials and the lack of visual documentation and depiction of events. It connects the events in Bulgaria with the Holocaust in Europe. It connects the dots between Bulgarian policies and actions and the human costs they bear.

Those Jews, who lived in the territories occupied and annexed by Bulgaria, were denied citizenship or permission to stay, and ultimately deported to be murdered in Treblinka. Bulgarian Jews who lived in Nazi occupied Paris and other places in Europe were refused protection by Bulgaria and consequently were deported to Auschwitz. 

The paintings in this book are the work of artist, Martha Aladjem Bloomfield, imagining the events based on testimonials of people who experienced the Holocaust in Bulgaria, locations visited, and archival and photographic research by Jacky Comforty. They provide information about the Jewish narrative which cannot be found in the archives, either because it was hidden, destroyed or never documented officially.