SOFIA -- The reappearance of the word "Jude" alongside a Star of David in downtown Bulgaria has alarmed the country's Jewish community and the owner of a local store following a stormy weekend scrape with supporters of a parliamentary party whose fortunes have risen alongside scapegoat populism.
On the morning of June 12, employees of the Cosmic Craft Beer shop found the anti-Semitic message scrawled on its front window in an ugly echo of the Nazi-led campaigns to identify Jews during the Holocaust throughout Central and Eastern Europe, including on these same streets in 1942.
No suspects have been identified.
But the vandalism followed tense standoffs with thugs from the far-right, nationalist Revival party, whose pugilistic leader and heavy-handed stunts have propelled it from also-ran to nearly 14 percent support nationally and 37 seats out of 240 in the current parliament during two years of deep political malaise.
"We have no intention of allowing ourselves to be intimidated and pressured," said a statement on the beer shop's Facebook page after the initial confrontation thanking the public after a "wave of support and empathy" that included texts, calls, and comments, as well as people turning up in person to push back against Revival's harassment.
The establishment's troubles began with a tense visit during an anti-government protest on June 10, when Cosmic Craft Beer's owner said a trio of Revival supporters in party T-shirts came in and demanded the internationally minded shop remove foreign flags hanging inside, along with other alleged harassment. Customers helped evict the men, who didn't purchase anything.
The same day, Revival supporters reportedly including lawmaker Slavcho Krumov broke into a nearby cinema to sabotage the planned screening of a film that was due to be part of the Sofia Pride film festival on June 17.
In response to the encounter at Cosmic Craft Beer, the owner taped up a printed sign that read: "We don't serve supporters of Revival," a photo of which was widely shared on social media.
A day later, on June 11, Revival supporters including Krumov blocked the beer shop's entrance demanding to be served, while the party boasted about its intimidation on its Facebook page, sharing the picture of the sign with the tag, "No bad publicity." It also encouraged followers to trash Cosmic Craft Beer's ratings on social media.
Neighbors arrived to try to help break up the Revival blockade before police finally arrived at the scene. There were no reports of injuries or material damage.
In its June 11 Facebook post, Cosmic Craft Beer acknowledged it was uneasy with its impromptu ban but decided to keep the sign up in light of the ongoing harassment by Revival supporters. "Regarding the sign that stirred up spirits so much," it said, "we intended to remove it in order to avoid petty quarrels, but after yesterday's incident and the numerous threats sent through various channels, we decided to leave it up for a while."
In its post, the shop added, "We believe that we live in a lawful state where everyone has the right to express their opinions and positions without fear of repression or their business being ruined."
The anti-Semitic messages on the shop window then appeared sometime between its 11 p.m. closing time on June 11 and the next morning.
Police said on June 14 that they had launched investigations into the cinema and beer-shop incidents.
Bulgaria has had a less problematic history with respect to its Jewish community than many of its neighbors.
Its political and religious elite earned widespread recognition for their actions in helping to protect tens of thousands of Bulgarian Jews from deportation to Nazi concentration camps during World War II. But the deportation of around 11,000 Jews to Nazi camps from other Bulgarian-held lands in 1943 remains a more sensitive topic.
Sofia has also hosted one of Europe's most prominent annual neo-Nazi events, known as the Lukov March to honor collaborationist wartime leader Hristo Lukov, which the local Jewish community has described as a "huge embarrassment."
Bulgarian officials are currently under EU and other international pressure to follow through on a 2021 pledge to enact a National Action Plan to Combat Anti-Semitism in line with an EU strategy adopted at around the same time.
The head of Shalom, a national Jewish group, expressed outrage at the vandalism but also at the ensuing silence that he suggested indicated growing "institutional support" for anti-Semitism.
"We are very disturbed, not only by the manifestations themselves, but also by the lack of condemnatory reactions and by the fact that in the last one year these people who are behind these manifestations have found their institutional support," Shalom President Alexander Oscar said.
Party Chairman Kostadin Kostadinov steered Revival into parliament on an ultranationalist, anti-Western, anti-vaxxer platform in 2021, with successive gains in subsequent elections during Bulgaria's two-year political stalemate.
Ukraine has barred him from the country over his outspoken backing for Russia since President Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Kostadinov has also spoken disparagingly of Roma, and Jewish leaders have criticized him in the past for comparing pandemic measures to Holocaust-era restrictions on Jews.
Up to around 1,500 people were estimated to have joined the downtown demonstration organized by Revival on June 10 to protest parliament's approval last week of a new centrist government led by Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov, following five elections in just over two years.
After the vandalism, the shop posted another message of gratitude to like-minded opponents of Revival's views and actions, including an "organized troll attack to lower our ratings" on the search engine Google.
"What you did was far more than raising stupid ratings. You have shown that thinking people exist, they are here and will not simply kneel to aggression!" it said. "There are no words to describe how grateful we are and most of all how much hope you have inspired not only in us, but we believe in many others!"
