After the Holocaust my Bulgarian grandmother, Rachelle Comforty, found herself living in the ancient city of Jaffa, Israel. She lived there for the next forty years

One summer afternoon in 1988, my wife and I went to her apartment to begin the task of sorting through her possessions. The apartment had been left untouched since her death three years earlier.

If you've ever lived near a desert, you know how important it is to dust daily. Miss one day and it’s as if the desert seeps in to reclaim your land.

We opened drawers and closets and found shoe boxes covered with sand. In the shoe boxes were photographs. They, however, were as clean and clear as the day they were made.

They were all of life in Bulgaria as my grandmother had known it. Here was the family at the turn of the century, posed stiffly in photographers' studios. There was World War I, captured on film by my grandfather, who brought his camera to it. And there was my grandmother, a young girl, playing the guitar on her front porch in 1923; cousins posing in their bathing suits at a Black Sea resort in 1937; my grandfather wearing the yellow Jewish star in 1943.

There were nearly 2,000 photographs.

Why had she kept them hidden? We will never really know. But at least we rescued them. And in turn they guided us in our search for answers to the mysteries of a much larger rescue story.

Our story begins with Rachamim Comforty and his two wives. Rachamim means mercy or compassion in Hebrew. Comforty is Italian for "comfort." The name worked well.

This photograph was taken in 1925, a few years after Rachamim married his cousin Rosa.( left.) He married her younger sister, Rachel, (right) only after Rosa died.

Rachamim and Rachel lived to a ripe old age and never explained why they had this picture taken. But we know it's from Bulgaria, the country so many know so little about.

In 1930 Rachamim and Rosa built their home in Plovdiv. The city was no longer a great metropolis. But it has always been home to many different peoples. Jews are believed to have first arrived with Phoenician traders, and to have settled the area along side followers of pagan religions and later, Christians and Moslems. For millennia a complex ethnic and religious harmony prevailed. It almost disappeared one cold spring day in 1943.

On March 10, 1943, Rachamim, married to Rachel now, walked with her and two of his children to the children's school. He looked back as he reached the corner to see how the police sealed the front door of his house. He saw, as they proceeded to the school yard, that they were joined by many neighbors who were also ordered to report there. They all carried suitcases packed with clothes and food for a long trip.

Treblinka was to be their destination. But they never reached it. After waiting all day long in the school yard, they were simply sent home. Rachamim was my grandfather, and because he was saved, I am alive and can tell the story.

The survival of the Bulgarian Jews is one of the last untold stories of the Holocaust. Bulgaria was the only country in Nazi Europe to save a large Jewish community. Every one of the Jews within its borders survived. 50,000 people did not die and few outside Bulgaria know about it and fewer still know why. What was it about Bulgaria that was different?

The Optimists  is an intertwining of two story lines, the story of the Comforty family and friends, and the story of the salvation of Bulgarian Jewry. Comforty family members were amateur photographers in Bulgaria at a time when few had cameras there. Thus, documentation of the time and place is readily available through these images as it is from no other source. However, while the Comforty family story anchors the film, the film is not about the Comfortys per se. The Comforty story is used to explore broader aspects of the story of the saving of the Jews and of Bulgarian Sephardic culture.

One of the main stories of the film is the story of The Optimists jazz band. The musicians recount many revealing incidents. Among these:  David Eskin, drummer for The Optimists, details his forced labor camp experience; clarinetist Niko Nissimov tells how he was deported with a group of Greek Jews and rescued from the train to Treblinka by Christian friends.

The personal stories make the historical facts more accessible and dramatically alive. Jacky Comforty narrates the film and leads viewers towards an understanding of culture of the Bulgarian Jews and the differing facts and testimonies reflecting the period and the events involved with the  survival of the Bulgarian Jews.

The Optimists features numerous individuals who each in his own way did something to foil the Bulgarian government's plan to deport its Jewish citizens. These everyday heroes and role models include religious leaders, educators, professionals, parliamentarians, trade unionists and many others.

Viewers of this film come away with a heightened sense of how individuals can change in a positive way the course of history.  Viewers also have a greater sense of the importance of personal responsibility, religious and ethnic tolerance, and human and democratic values.

Photo found in one of the shoe boxes: Rachelle Beracha Comforty plays the guitar in 1923  on the front porch of her parents’ home in Gorna Djumaya, (today Blagoev Grad) Bulgaria.

Rachamim and Roza Comforty and friends, visiting the sphinx in Egypt, May 1935.
 

Rachaminm Comforty and his two wives.
 

Plovdiv in 1930.
 

The Comforty Family in 1943.
 

Confiscated radios of Jewish families, Sofia 1941.
 

The Optimists, 1940. Niko Nissimov with the saxophone on the right
 

Niko Nissimov with a yellow star, 1942
 

Niko Nissimov visits Anton Kirilov, Svode Bulgaria 1982.
 

Bishop Boris Kharalampiev, the priest from Pazardjik, who helped rescue the Jewish citizens of his city in 1943.