The Optimists

Jacky Comforty's unexpectedly uplifting documentary about the plight of Bulgarian Jews during the Holocaust begins with an all-too-familiar scenario. In the early morning darkness of March 10, 1943, all the Jews in the Bulgarian town of Pazardjik were roused from their beds, ordered to pack a few of their belongings and marched at gunpoint to a schoolyard to await deportation. Bulgaria had allied itself with Germany's Nazi regime, and Bulgarian Jews living in Nazi-occupied territories such as Greece and Macedonia had already been rounded up and sent to death camps at Auschwitz and Treblinka. But something totally unexpected happened to Pazardjik's Jews: Instead of be...