Stories We Were Never Told is a powerful multimedia exhibition that brings to light a largely overlooked and deeply misunderstood chapter of Holocaust history: Bulgaria’s collaboration with Nazi Germany and its consequences for Jewish communities across the Balkans. For decades, a dominant narrative claimed that there was “no Holocaust in Bulgaria.” This exhibition challenges that myth. Through original paintings, survivor testimonies, archival photographs, documents, film, and audio recordings, Stories We Were Never Told reconstructs the complex reality experienced by Jewish communities in Bulgaria, Northern Greece, North Macedonia, and Serbia during World War II.
Curated and researched by internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker and oral historian Jacky Comforty, and brought to life through evocative paintings by artist and scholar Martha Aladjem Bloomfield, the exhibition restores voices that were silenced, ignored, or erased. Drawing on more than 150 survivor and eyewitness interviews conducted across the Balkans, the exhibition bridges the gap between testimony and visual documentation, transforming memory into a deeply human and immersive narrative.
While a combination of civic resistance and social networks helped spare many Bulgarian Jews from deportation, thousands of Jews living in territories annexed by Bulgaria were deported to Treblinka and murdered. At least 12,000 Jews became victims of Bulgaria’s collaboration in the Final Solution.
Stories We Were Never Told places these events within the broader context of the Holocaust across Europe, emphasizing both survival and loss, resistance and complicity.
The exhibition is organized thematically, exploring:
Life Before the War, highlighting Jewish migration to the Balkans, identity, and integration into Bulgarian society
The Rise of Antisemitism and the Final Solution, examining political instability, Nazi influence, and state-sponsored persecution
Jewish Resistance and Resilience, including the extraordinary anti-deportation protests of May 1943 and the networks of solidarity that helped save lives Innovative in both form and method, Stories We Were Never Told demonstrates how art, oral history, archival research, and digital media can work together to construct a coherent and ethical historical narrative.
QR codes throughout the exhibition connect visitors to survivor voices, film excerpts, and archival materials, deepening engagement and encouraging reflection. Above all, this exhibition is an act of remembrance and restoration. It honors Jewish, Greek, Serbian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian victims of the Holocaust, and affirms the importance of confronting suppressed histories to better understand the past and its enduring impact.