World Jewish Congress mourns the passing of Emil Kalo, ז ל 06 Jan 2021 share this on
The World Jewish Congress mourns the passing of Emil
Kalo, ז ל, a prominent leader of the
Bulgarian Jewish community, who served as president of the Organization of Jews in Bulgaria Shalom organization for
nearly 20 years.
“Emil was born shortly after the war, at a time when the Jewish population of
Bulgaria had been severely depleted by migration to Israel. After the collapse
of the Communist regime, he was one of those responsible for breathing new life
into a moribund community,” said WJC President Ronald S. Lauder. “A prolific
Over the weekend, vandals claiming to belong to Antifa Bulgaria painted a synagogue in the country with graffiti reading “free Palestine” and equated the Israeli government with the Nazi regime.
The target of the vandals was Bulgaria’s oldest synagogue, the Zion Synagogue in Plovdiv, a city on Bulgaria’s border with Turkey.
Shalom, an organization that represents Bulgarian Jewry, condemned the graffiti, according to Bulgarian news outlet the Sofia Globe. In their condemnation, Shalom cited the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which categorizes the comparison of modern Israeli policies to the Nazi regime as a form of antisemitism.