site.bta"Jewish Bulgaria" Photo Exhibition Opens at Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Budapest

A photo exhibition entitled "Jewish Bulgaria" opened at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute (BCI) in Budapest on Tuesday as a joint initiative of the Institute and the Bulgarian Association in the Hungarian capital's Terezvaros District. It will be on until December 4, 2023.

The photographs, taken by prominent Bulgarian photographer and journalist Anthony Georgieff, present some of the most beautiful and remarkable Jewish cultural landmarks in Bulgaria and some less well known ones, including the synagogues in Sofia, Varna and Vidin, elements of traditional Jewish rituals, tombstone fragments, etc., BCI Director Plamen Peykov told BTA on Wednesday. 

The 60 large photographs on display, taken over a period of ten years, cover 20 centuries of Jewish heritage in Bulgaria and have already been exhibited in Sofia, London, Prague and Szeged. 

"Along with popularizing the best examples of Jewish architecture in Bulgaria, Anthony Georgieff's messages express pain and disappointment at the negligent public treatment of most of these cultural landmarks and call for intolerance of mismanagement, gross vandalism and anti-Semitism," he pointed out.

Addressing the opening of the event, Hungarian writer Gabor Schein looked back at the settling of large numbers of Jews in the Ottoman Empire, including in the Bulgarian lands. He also dwelt on the fateful events in the period of Wold War II and credited Bulgarians for saving their fellow Jewish citizens from the Nazi death camps. "Unlike many European countries, Bulgaria had a pre-war and a post-war Jewish population of the same size after WW II," Schein pointed out.

Peykov said that in his statement Georgieff thanked for the interest shown in his photographs and drew a parallel with the grave situation in the Middle East. He called on the audience to observe a minute of silence in memory of the victims of terrorism.

Bulgaria's Ambassador to Hungary Hristo Polendakov, Bulgarians resident in Budapest, Hungarian intellectuals who are friends of Bulgaria, and locals and visitors interested in Jewish culture attended the opening of the exhibition.