{"id":100,"date":"2014-06-26T02:10:02","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T02:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jazzofoptimists.comforty.com\/?page_id=56"},"modified":"2014-06-26T02:10:02","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T02:10:02","slug":"the-optimists","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/jazzofoptimists\/the-optimists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Optimists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p5\" style=\"color: #222222\">Seventy years ago, 50,000 Bulgarian Jews survived the Holocaust because Bulgarian Christians\u00a0helped defend them. <a title=\"The Optimists - The Film\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theoptimists.com\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>The film The Optimists<\/strong><\/a>: The Story of the Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews from the\u00a0Holocaust tells the inspiring story of the many individuals who, each in his or her own way,\u00a0took action to foil the Nazis\u2019 plans to send Bulgarian Jewry to concentration camps.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\" style=\"color: #222222\">Yet another European Jewish community \u2014 this one inheritors of the distinctive Sephardic culture\u00a0of the Jews of medieval Spain \u2014 seemed destined for quick annihilation. But they were spared the\u00a0<span class=\"s1\" style=\"font-weight: inherit;font-style: inherit\">fate of most of Europe\u2019s Jewry. The\u00a0<\/span>everyday heroes who made this miracle happen included\u00a0Christians and Muslims from all walks of life: business men, housewives, religious leaders,\u00a0trade unionists, educators, lawyers, doctors and other professionals, government officials, an\u00a0many others. Theirs is an especially compelling lesson for today\u2019s world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\" style=\"color: #222222\">The Optimists explores how different ethnic and religious groups stood by each other in Bulgaria\u00a0even during the Holocaust. Bulgaria\u2019s experience offers valuable insight into how people can\u00a0build bridges between different communities of different ethnic and religious backgrounds and, in\u00a0so doing, defend human and civil rights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\" style=\"color: #222222\">It is not only a Jewish story. It is a universal one, powerful in its ability to inform and inspire all\u00a0audiences.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"p8\" style=\"font-weight: 300;color: #4ea2bd\"><em style=\"font-weight: inherit\"><strong style=\"font-style: inherit\">\u201cEveryone is entitled to his own faith.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/em><em style=\"font-weight: inherit\"><strong style=\"font-style: inherit\">No one should violate the intimate,\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><em style=\"font-weight: inherit\"><strong style=\"font-style: inherit\">spiritual life of another.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/em><em style=\"font-weight: inherit\"><strong style=\"font-style: inherit\">That\u2019s how I think now,\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><em style=\"font-weight: inherit\"><strong style=\"font-style: inherit\">that\u2019s how I have thought in the past,<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/em><em style=\"font-weight: inherit\"><strong style=\"font-style: inherit\">and if I live any longer,<\/strong><\/em><em style=\"font-weight: inherit\"><strong style=\"font-style: inherit\">that\u2019s how I\u2019ll think then.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n<p class=\"p5\" style=\"color: #222222\"><strong style=\"font-style: inherit\">\u2013 Bishop Boris Kharalampiev<span class=\"s2\" style=\"font-weight: inherit;font-style: inherit\">\u00a0,\u00a0<\/span>Pazardjik, Bulgaria,\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong style=\"font-style: inherit\"><span class=\"s2\" style=\"font-weight: inherit;font-style: inherit\">w<\/span>ho helped stop\u00a0the deportations of Jews from his city in 1943<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\" style=\"color: #222222\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seventy years ago, 50,000 Bulgarian Jews survived the Holocaust because Bulgarian Christians\u00a0helped defend them. The film The Optimists: The Story of the Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews from the\u00a0Holocaust tells the inspiring story of the many individuals who, each in his or her own way,\u00a0took action to foil the Nazis\u2019 plans to send Bulgarian Jewry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-100","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/jazzofoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/jazzofoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/jazzofoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/jazzofoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/jazzofoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/jazzofoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/jazzofoptimists\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comforty.com\/jazzofoptimists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}