A Blood Libel in Stanimaka

Twelve-year old Ivan Demitrov, a fourth-grade student in the Bulgarian school, was scolded by his Bulgarian teacher for not sitting still in school on Friday, the tenth of this month. After playing in the street for a while, he ran off to Filibe¹ without telling his parents.

At eight o’clock on Shabbat [Friday] evening, when the boy’s father came home, he was told that the boy had been gone the entire day. Hearing this, the man went out to the marketplace and gathered a group of people. They began to search the Jewish homes, then the synagogue, the Jewish school, and the ezra,² forcing open the heykhal.³ Finding nothing, they went to Sr. B. Yitsḥak’s⁴ house, to search there as well. They started hollering and were joined by many more people and by gendarmes, who turned the house upside-down. Meanwhile, we visited the chief, asking him to send us help.

On Shabbat [Saturday] morning, groups shouting against the Jews spread across the city. The chief promised us his help.

Meanwhile, we learned from cart drivers that the boy had gone to Filibe. The chief dispatched the father—according to La Luz—to go to Filibe and get his son, which is what he did[.] Indeed, he returned with the boy.