Bulgaria Jewish Records

Introduction
Administratively, Bulgaria is divided into twenty eight districts. Each district has an archive where civil registration records are preserved. For civil registration records, see the "Civil Registration" section.

Most of the archival material of the Sofia Jewish community was burned by the community itself before Jews were deported from the capital during World War II. However, death registers that cover a period of at least 100 years (the first registration date unknown) are held in the synagogue and in the Jewish Plot Office of the Municipal Cemetery.

Vital records for Sofia from 1878 are kept in the Municipal Distict Council. There are no vital records in the National Historical Archive in Sofia.

Archives and Libraries
The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem (CAHJP) The Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Edmond J. Safra Campus Givat Ram P.O. Box 39077 Jerusalem 91390 Phone: +972 2-658-6249 Email: cahjp@nli.org.il Website: cahjp.nli.org.il

The CAHJP holds microfilmed group passports of the immigrants who arrived in Israel from all Jewish-Bulgarian communities between October 1948 and May 1949. Unfortunately, the lists are not arranged alphabetically and some pages are illegible. The archives also has lists of immigrant surnames by ships and various records for different time periods from a number of communities in Bulgaria. They also have records from a few Jewish communities.

The Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center Tel Aviv University Campus Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv Carter Building, 3rd floor, rooms 318-319 Israel Phone: 03-6409799 Email: diaspora@post.tau.ac.il Website: www.tau.ac.il

The Diaspora Research Center holds the results of a 1990-94 project that collected photographs and documentation on Bulgarian Jewish archives, cemeteries, institutions, religious objects, neighborhoods, private and public libraries, and synagogues. The project includes a systematic photographic record of the archives of Jewish communities kept in the State Archives in Sofia. The collection includes the archives of all the Jewish communities from the 16th century until 1960.

Printed Sources

 * The Family History Library has microfilms of civil registration for the districts of Sofia and Plovdiv. In the FamilySearch Catalog, look in the Place Search under: BULGARIA, [DISTRICT], [LOCALITY] - CIVIL REGISTRATION.
 * Tagger, Mathilde A. "A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames in Bulgaria: A Window on Its History." In: Avotaynu Volume XXV, No. 4 (Winter 2009), pp. 12-17. [FHL INTL. 296.05 Av79 v. 24].