Magnificent Ketubah - Plovdiv - Bulgaria 1943 - Five days before the Plovdiv Aktion

Magnificent Ketubah - Plovdiv - Bulgaria 1943 - Five days before the Plovdiv Aktion

Magnificent and large Ketubah in lithographic print for the marriage of the groom Menachem Burla with the bride Blaish Baksh - Plovdiv - Bulgaria Adar 1943. Local printing in Plovdiv.

At the top of the Ketubah is a Star of David and the inscription "In the name of G-d", on the right and left are magnificent decorative columns. The ketubah itself as well as the handwritten filling are all in Hebrew. Bulgarian stamps.

The ketubah was completed on March 5, 1943 - a month after Alexander Balev signed an agreement with Nazi Germany on behalf of the Bulgarian government in which the Bulgarians agreed to deport 20,000 Jews from the territories of Thrace and Macedonia. At that time there were 11,343 Jews in these territories and the Bulgarian government decided to complete the quota from among the Jews of "Old Bulgaria" including Plovdiv. On March 10, 1943, five days after the Ketubah before us was filled in, an aktion was carried out in which most of the city's Jews were arrested and gathered in the elementary school prior to their deportation to Treblinka. A struggle waged by Bulgarian politicians, led by Dimitar Peshev, led to the cancellation of the deportation and the release of members of the community to their homes. Plovdiv (Bulgarian: Пловдив) is the second largest city in Bulgaria, after the capital Sofia.

The collection of Ketubot in the National Library does not contain a single inscription from the city of Plovdiv in Bulgaria.

Size: 61x45 cm. Folding marks. Good condition. Glued to a hard substrate for protection.