Varna

The origins of the Jewish settlement in Varna during the modern era are related to the liberalization of grain trade and the development of the port of Varna in the late 1830s and 1840s. It was then that the brothers Adolf-Salvator and Emanuel-Marius Tedeschi, heirs of a rich Jewish merchant of Marseilles, settled in Varna. They both engaged in trade and assumed  several consular posts (Austrian, French, Russian and Belgian), becoming thus the most prominent members of the small Jewish community comprising in 1851, according to the Greek Consul in Varna Andre Papadopoulo- Vretos, 30 persons (taxpayers).  The Jewish community grew steadily during the last years of Ottoman rule and in the first decades of Bulgarian autonomous rule. According to Bulgarian censuses the Jews of Varna were 574 and 1308 persons in 1881 and 1900 respectively, most of them (1080 out of 1308 in 1900) Ladino speaking Sephardic Jews. By that time the Jewish community had two schools (one financed by Alliance Israelite Universelle) and considerable real estate. The growth of the community was attested by the building by the Sephardim of an impressive synagogue in 1890. A separate community was formed by the small minority of Eskenazy Jews of Varna (101 in 1900), among whom the physician Dr. Ochs, the founder of the first medical journal in Bulgaria.     

References

Bibliography:
Библиография:

Стоянова, В., „Историко-етнографски щрихи от битието на еврейската общност във Варна“, Известия на Народния Музей – Варна, 38-39 (2003), 47-104л