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The Optimists
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Opening
at the Wilmette Theater Director: Jacky Comforty Written and produced by: Jacky and Lisa Comforty Executive producer: Pierre Sauvage Co-producers: Gail Sonnenfeld, Stefan Sonnenfeld |
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The Optimists
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Opening
at the Wilmette Theater Director: Jacky Comforty Written and produced by: Jacky and Lisa Comforty Executive producer: Pierre Sauvage Co-producers: Gail Sonnenfeld, Stefan Sonnenfeld |
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In March, 1943, 8,500
prominent Jews in Bulgaria were to be the first from that country to be
deported to the death camp at Treblinka. Bulgaria was allied with
Germany. Yet another European Jewish community -- this one
inheritors of the distinctive culture of the Jews of medieval Spain --
seemed destined for quick annihilation.
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. |
Rachamim Comforty and his "two wives." His first wife was Rosa (left). Her sister, Rachelle (right), became his second wife when Rosa died. Dupnitza, Bulgaria; 1920. |
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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
Auschwitz. 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. |
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. |
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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 State 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. |
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. |
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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 Comfortys, minus one. 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. |
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| 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. |
Jewish laborers in a Bulgarian forced labor camp near Greek border. 1942. Bitush Comforty, Jacky Comforty's father is first on the right. |
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| 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. |
 Mother and Child: Macedonian Jews deported by Bulgaria in March, 1943. This mother and child and all those deported with them were murdered shortly after this picture was taken. |
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"The Optimists" is a presentation of Comforty Media Concepts and the Chambon Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation established by filmmaker Pierre Sauvage, who serves as Executive Producer of "The Optimists." 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. The Optimists, 82 minutes long, wil 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. |
 Bishop Boris Kharalampiev, Bishop of Pazardjik, Bulgaria, who helped stop the deportations of Jews from his city in 1943. "
Everyone
is entitled to his own faith. --Bishop Boris Kharalampiev |
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The Optimists is a
presentation of Comforty
Media Concepts and the Chambon
Foundation.
Produced and distributed by Comforty Media Concepts.
For
more information,
questions or comments please
contact
comforty@comforty.com
Last
modified: August 22, 2002
Copyright © 2001 Comforty Media Concepts
