The fruit of over 15 years of travelling and studying Jewish material heritage in Bulgaria, this exhibition features 50 photographs by the famous Bulgarian journalist, writer and photographer, Anthony Georgieff. The author takes us from Vidin to Burgas, and from Silistra to Gotse Delchev—places where there used to be, or there is a Jewish presence nowadays.

Over some twenty centuries, Jews have left a remarkable material heritage on the Bulgarian lands—it has remained somewhat in the shadow, unlike intangible heritage, which enjoys wide popularity in Bulgaria and around the world. Not always in good condition, and only sporadically cared for, it has been an integral and important part of Bulgarian national culture throughout the centuries, as it is in modern times.

Shared memory is an exhibition about the past, which has always been contradictory and dramatic in our lands. The photographs of abandoned cemeteries and crumbling synagogues evoke a sense of melancholy for a bygone world, for an old-time culture that will never return. Still, it is an indispensable part of the present and the future, where people of the new generations of the Jewish community are and will continue to be fully fledged citizens.

The journey began from Gigen, a village not far from the Danube, where the earliest tangible proof of Jews inhabiting our lands was discovered in the ruins of an old Roman city dating back to the 2nd century CE. Successively, we visited the Plovdiv Regional Museum of Archaeology where a restored mosaic depicting a huge menorah (Jewish candelabrum), from a long-destroyed ancient synagogue near the Bishop’s Basilica of Philippopolis, is on display; the former synagogues in Silistra and Ruse, now converted into evangelical churches; the ruins of a Sephardic synagogue in Varna; the synagogues in Burgas and Yambol, today city art galleries; the cemeteries in Karnobat, which seem to have come out of a story about Judgement Day; the former synagogue in the town of Gotse Delchev, now turned into a ‘1-Euro’ shop; and finally, Sofia, where the Central Synagogue, opened on 9 September 1909 in the presence of Tsar Ferdinand, is completely restored, and is currently one of the largest and most magnificent Sephardic synagogues in the world.

The exhibition was made possible with the support of the Shalom Organization of Jews in Bulgaria, the NEGEV Organization of Friends of Israel in Bulgaria, the Federation of Zionists in Bulgaria, the America for Bulgaria Foundation, and the American Jewish Committee.