In that same month, the Nazis and their Bulgarian allies had successfully deported the 11,500 Jews of Bulgarian- occupied Thrace and Macedonia. And yet, after waiting several hours at deportation centers, these targeted Bulgarian Jews were simply told to go home. Ultimately, despite Nazi pressures, the entire 50,000-member Jewish community of Bulgaria was spared the Holocaust. Theirs was the only Jewish community to survive intact in Nazi Europe.

Israeli filmmaker Jacky Comforty is the son of Bulgarian Jews; his paternal grandparents and extended family were among those rounded up for the train ride to Treblinka. He has long been determined to tell the story of the Bulgarian Jews, and to do so before those who lived it have passed away.

Sweeping changes in Eastern Europe finally made possible exhaustive, ground-breaking research in Bulgaria. Mr. Comforty, along with his wife and co-producer, Lisa Vogel Comforty, spent four months in 1990 filming in Bulgaria, Israel, and Spain. Their film is based on materials collected there.

Their collection includes 160 hours of interviews and on-location documenting of communities, social events, landscapes, and other scenes; 5,000 photographs of pre-war and war-time Bulgarian Jewish life; and hours of rare archival film footage, sound recordings, documents, and artifacts.

Before the Comfortys began their original research, few others had interviewed Bulgarian Jews or otherwise documented their experience and heritage. Few photographs of Bulgarian Jewry were formally collected. The Comforty Collection, as it is known at the United States Holocaust Museum, contains about 5,000 photographs of Bulgarian Jewish life from the turn of the century through World War II. The Comfortys discovered about 2,000 photos upon the death of Jacky Comforty’s grandmother, Rachel Comforty, who had hidden them in shoe boxes in her Jaffa apartment over the course of forty years. Rachel had carried most of these photographs with her when she emigrated from Bulgaria to Israel in 1949.  She had carefully kept them throughout World War II in Bulgaria, carried them with her on a rickety boat to Israel, and then kept them with her  in the tents she lived in in refugee camps when she first arrived in Israel.

The photos required intensive preservation efforts. Much of the Comfortys’ work over the past several years has consisted of cleaning, properly storing, identifying, organizing, and digitally archiving the photos, preparing them for museum archiving and exhibition.

The even greater miracle, of course, is that Bulgarian Jewry escaped the fate suffered by all other Jewish communities in Nazi-allied and occupied Europe. But fifty-eight years have passed since this chapter in Holocaust history and the reasons the Jews were saved, and the very fact itself, remain obscure.

How and why did humanistic values triumph over destructive ones in Bulgaria? 

The Bulgarian Jewish experience provides a model for peaceful coexistence of disparate peoples. During World War II, individuals made a difference, as did organized efforts by many groups. However, Bulgarian Jews, Christians and Moslems have lived together harmoniously in Bulgaria for millennia. The subject offers valuable insight into what conditions encourage the protection of human rights, civil liberties, and tolerant relations between people of different religions and cultures. It is not simply a Jewish story. It is a universal one, powerful in its ability to instruct and inspire all audiences.

The Comfortys’ goal is to bring this story to public attention. Their purpose is to heighten appreciation of the potential for human good reflected in this chapter of Holocaust history and to explore how that potential came to be fulfilled. Both current and future generations are, and will always be, in need of such examples. The Bulgarian experience should not be allowed to drift into obscurity and it is in danger of doing so, as those who remain to testify about it age and pass away. It should remain, along with other instances of rescue, at the forefront of understanding about the Holocaust. The Optimists helps to build awareness about a time and place in which the relentless evil of the Holocaust was, in large measure, vanquished by common decency and uncommon courage.

"The Optimists" is a presentation of Comforty Media Concepts and  the Chambon Foundation, a  non-profit  educational foundation established by filmmaker Pierre Sauvage. The Chambon Foundation, is named in honor of the French village of Le Chambon; in the area of Le Chambon, 5,000 Jews were sheltered during the Holocaust by 5,000 Christians. This story that was the subject of Sauvage's highly acclaimed documentary "Weapons of the Spirit" The Chambon Foundation is dedicated to documentary exploration of the Holocaust and to communicating "the necessary lessons of hope intertwined with the Holocaust's unavoidable lessons of despair."

The Optimists, 82 minutes long, will open at the Wilmette Theater in Wilmette Illinois on October 18, 2002 and will screen also in LA and NY in fall 2002. Grants and other types of funding have been provided in part by the Maurice Amado Foundation, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Illinois Humanities Council, and the Israeli Ministries of Industry and Trade and Foreign Affairs, and private donors.

Jacky Comforty's paternal grandfather and his family just before they were to be deported to concentration camps: Rachelle, Mimi, Aaron, and Rachamim Comforty. At home in Plovidv, Bulgaria. Not in picture: Bitush, Jacky's father, who was interned in a forced labor camp.  Note Jewish star on Rachamim.  March, 1943.

Jewish wedding party, circa early 1920's.  

Jacky Comfortyís grandfather, Rachamim Comforty, is the third on the right. Rachelle Beracha Comforty is seated at the far end.

King Boris III and Hitler. Excerpt from archival footage used in The Optimists 

From the moment the Nazis came to power, the Bulgarian regime allied itself with Germany. In 1934, King Boris III assumed dictatorial power in Bulgaria. Bulgaria’s alliance with Germany grew ever stronger. Germany was its main partner in trade. Bulgaria sold agricultural products and bought, in return, machinery and weapons.

But it imported more than equipment. Nazi ideology and propaganda, anti-Semitism, and a national arrogance were imported as well. Young Bulgarians joined youth movements in imitation of Hitler youth groups. Bulgarian children learned to give the Nazi salute.