The Holocaust in Bulgaria was the persecution, deportation, and annihilation of
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
between 1939 and 1944 in the
Kingdom of Bulgaria
The Tsardom of Bulgaria ( bg, Царство България, translit=Tsarstvo Balgariya), also referred to as the Third Bulgarian Tsardom ( bg, Трето Българско Царство, translit=Treto Balgarsko Tsarstvo, links=no), someti ...
and Bulgarian-occupied Yugoslavia and Greece during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, arranged by the Nazi Germany-allied government of
Tsar Boris III
Boris III ( bg, Борѝс III ; Boris Treti; 28 August 1943), originally Boris Klemens Robert Maria Pius Ludwig Stanislaus Xaver (Boris Clement Robert Mary Pius Louis Stanislaus Xavier) , was the Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1918 until hi ...
and
prime minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
Bogdan Filov. The persecution began in 1939, intensified after early 1941 and culminated in March 1943 with the arrest and deportation of almost all11,343of the Jews living in Bulgarian-occupied regions of Macedonia,
Thrace
Thrace (; el, Θράκη, Thráki; bg, Тракия, Trakiya; tr, Trakya) or Thrake is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe, now split among Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, which is bounded by the Balkan Mountains to t ...
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
in
German-occupied Poland
German-occupied Poland during World War II consisted of two major parts with different types of administration.
The Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany following the invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II—nearly a quarter of the ...
.
The planned deportation of the 48,000 Jews from within Bulgaria's pre-war borders was never carried out despite the Bulgarian authorities beginning detentions in preparation. Upon becoming aware of the impending plans members of parliament led by
Dimitar Peshev
Dimitar Peshev ( bg, Димитър Пешев; 25 June 1894 – 20 February 1973) was the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Bulgaria and Minister of Justice (1935–1936), before World War II. He rebelled against the pro-Nazi cabinet and ...
pressured the interior minister to revoke the initial deportation order, while protests by Bulgarian public figures, among them Bulgarian Orthodox Church bishops Stefan of Sofia and Kiril of Plovdiv, leaders of professional organisations, and others persuaded the Tsar first to stop the deportation temporarily in March 1943, and two months later to postpone it indefinitely. The Jews whose deportation from Bulgaria was halted, including all Sofia's 25,743 Jews, nonetheless had their property confiscated, were forcibly relocated within the country, and all Jewish males between the ages of 20 and 46 were conscripted into the Labour Corps until September 1944. The events that prevented the deportation to
extermination camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
s of about 48,000 Jews in spring 1943 are termed the Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews. Although most Jews who were deported were murdered, the survival rate of the Jewish population in Bulgaria was one of the highest in
Axis
An axis (plural ''axes'') is an imaginary line around which an object rotates or is symmetrical. Axis may also refer to:
Mathematics
* Axis of rotation: see rotation around a fixed axis
* Axis (mathematics), a designator for a Cartesian-coordinat ...
Europe.
History
The Bulgarian government under Tsar Boris III acted as a loyal ally to
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, as the country was also a
Tripartite Pact
The Tripartite Pact, also known as the Berlin Pact, was an agreement between Germany, Italy, and Japan signed in Berlin on 27 September 1940 by, respectively, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano and Saburō Kurusu. It was a defensive milit ...
member since March 1941. The rise of
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
saw an increasingly radicalised Bulgaria, as it eventually adopted anti-Semitic legislation, based on the German example. Bulgaria's alliance with Germany during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
placed the former into a position of obedience and conformity. In addition, the Bulgarian government was ridden with politicians that held pro-fascist and anti-democratic sentiments. Such was the case of Prime Minister Bogdan Filov, who on 8 October 1940 marginalised the country's Jewry by introducing the bill culminating in the passage of the Law for the Protection of the Nation ( bg, Закон за защита на нацията, translit=Zakon za zashtita na natsiyata), which entered into force in January 1941 and which restricted the rights and activities of Jews. Saliently, it forbade the granting of Bulgarian citizenship to Jews.Alexander Belev had been sent by the interior minister
Petar Gabrovski
Petar Dimitrov Gabrovski () (9 July 1898 – 1 February 1945) was a Bulgarian politician who briefly served as Prime Minister during the Second World War. Gabrovski was a lawyer by profession. He was also a member of the Grand Masonic Lodge o ...
to Germany in order to study the racial laws; the legislation was modelled on the racial code of Nazi Germany, the
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of th ...
. The bill had been supported by the pro-Nazi
Union of Bulgarian National Legions
The Union of Bulgarian National Legions (UBNL) ( bg, Съюз на Българските Национални Легиони (СБНЛ); ''Sayuz na Balgarskite Natsionalni Legioni'' (''SBNL'')), until 1935 the Union of the National Youth Legions ...
, the
Ratniks
The Union of Warriors for the Advancement of the Bulgarianness ( bg, Съюз на ратниците за напредъка на българщината, ''Sayuz na ratnitsite za napredaka na balgarshtinata''), commonly known as just the Ratni ...
, Brannik (a Bulgarian version of Nazi Germany's ''
Hitlerjugend
The Hitler Youth (german: Hitlerjugend , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926 ...
''), and other right-wing conservative organisations such as the Federation of Reserve Officers, the Federation of Reserve Sergeants and Soldiers, the Merchants' Association, the Students' Union, the Bulgarian Youth League, and the Pharmacists' Association. It was also supported by leading delegate Dimitar Peshev, who later had a role in the rescue. On the other hand, the bill was criticised by deputies from the parliamentary opposition (Communists and non-Communists alike) and even former cabinet ministers like Dimo Kazasov,
Yanko Sakazov
Yanko Ivanov Sakazov ( bg, Янко Иванов Сакъзов; 24 September 1860 – 2 February 1941Heumos, Peter. Europäischer Sozialismus im Kalten Krieg: Briefe und Berichte 1944 - 1948'. Frankfurt/Main .a. Campus-Verl, 2004. p. 55) was a ...
, and Stoyan Kosturkov. The professional associations of Bulgarian lawyers, physicians, craftsmen and the Union of Artists' Societies opposed the law with petitions. The Holy Synod, governing body of the
Bulgarian Orthodox Church
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church ( bg, Българска православна църква, translit=Balgarska pravoslavna tsarkva), legally the Patriarchate of Bulgaria ( bg, Българска патриаршия, links=no, translit=Balgarsk ...
, was also quite critical, with high clergy such as Archbishop Stefan of Sofia and bishops Neofit of Vidin and Kyril of Plovdiv leading the opposition. Throughout 1941, members of Brannik and the "Insurgents" (''Chetnitsi'') indulged in random acts of violence against Jews.
In January 1942, Germany outlined what it called the
Final Solution to the Jewish Question
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
at the Wannsee Conference. This included the creation of camps designed, not to house deportees, but solely to execute them as quickly as possible after they arrived. Shortly thereafter in June 1942, interior minister Petar Gabrovski created within the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior a Commissariat for the Jewish Affairs, and chose another prominent pro-Nazi politician, Alexander Belev to lead it. The new department began to prepare for the Final Solution. Belev signed a secret agreement with Germany's '' SS-
Hauptsturmführer
__NOTOC__
(, ; short: ''Hstuf'') was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organizations such as the SS, NSKK and the NSFK. The rank of ''Hauptsturmführer'' was a mid-level commander and had equivalent seniority to a ...
''
Theodor Dannecker
Theodor Denecke (also spelled Dannecker) (27 March 1913 – 10 December 1945) was a German SS-captain (), a key aide to Adolf Eichmann in the deportation of Jews during World War II.
A trained lawyer Denecke first served at the Reich Security M ...
on 22 February 1943 to deport 20,000 Jews, starting from the occupied Greek areas of
Eastern Macedonia and Thrace
Eastern Macedonia and Thrace ( el, Ανατολική Μακεδονία και Θράκη, translit=Anatolikí Makedonía ke Thráki, ) is one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It consists of the northeastern parts of the coun ...
and Yugoslav areas of
Vardar Macedonia
Vardar Macedonia ( Macedonian and sr, Вардарска Македонија, ''Vardarska Makedonija'') was the name given to the territory of the Kingdom of Serbia (1912–1918) and Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1941) roughly corresponding to t ...
and Pomoravlje first, which had been conquered by Germany but had since 1941 been under occupation by the Bulgarian authorities.
The deportation of 11,343 Jews (7,122 from Macedonia and 4,221 from Thrace) was organised and executed by the Bulgarian authorities, with the
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
Greek Thrace
Western Thrace or West Thrace ( el, υτικήΘράκη, '' ytikíThráki'' ; tr, Batı Trakya; bg, Западна/Беломорска Тракия, ''Zapadna/Belomorska Trakiya''), also known as Greek Thrace, is a geographic and histori ...
Pirot
Pirot ( sr-cyr, Пирот) is a city and the administrative center of the Pirot District in southeastern Serbia. According to 2011 census, the urban area of the city has a population of 38,785, while the population of the city administrative area ...
in
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...
, began to be rounded up 4 March 1943. They were transported by train via transit camps in Bulgaria to Lom on the
Danube
The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , pa ...
, then by boat to
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, and again by train to the death camp of Treblinka. The railway that carried the trains transporting Jewish deportees from Greece was constructed by Bulgarian Jewish forced labourers in the winter of late 1942 and early 1943. By 15 March, all but about a dozen of the Jews had been murdered at Treblinka. The Bulgarians had overestimated the number of Jews in the occupied territories and to fulfil the Belev-Dannecker pact, Belev drew up a plan to include approximately 8,000 Jews from within Bulgaria's pre-war borders, beginning in the southwest and in the capital.
The Bulgarian society was divided on the Jewish issue, as pro-Nazi government officials were in favour of the deportation, as well as antisemitic restrictions and laws; while notable figures in the
Orthodox Church
Orthodox Church may refer to:
* Eastern Orthodox Church
* Oriental Orthodox Churches
* Orthodox Presbyterian Church
* Orthodox Presbyterian Church of New Zealand
* State church of the Roman Empire
* True Orthodox church
See also
* Orthodox (di ...
, joined by some members of the Parliament and intellectuals, were opposed to the ongoing dehumanisation of the Jews. The Church also objected to the treatment of ethnically Jews, who converted to Christianity. On 21 May 1943 the Council of Ministers voted that Jews were to be expelled from Sofia to the countryside in three days' time. The Metropolitan Stefan offered to baptise any Jews that sought the protection of the church; the Ministry of Religions decided it would not recognise such baptisms and would deport any Jews christened that year regardless. Stefan threatened to reveal this to all parish priests; in response the interior ministry ordered him to close all churches in Sofia. When he refused, the interior ministry sought his arrest, but Belev intervened to prevent action being taken against him. Belev ordered the expulsion on 24 May of Jews from the capital: 19,000 Sofia Jews (according to other sources25,743) were deported to specific rural areas and towns. Special trains were arranged and the Jews were assigned specific departures, separating family members. A maximum of 30 kg of property per person was allowed; the rest they were forced leave behind, to sell at "abusively low" prices, or which was otherwise pilfered or stolen. Bulgarian officials and neighbours benefited from the proceeds.
Although there was some internal political and social tension with regards to the treatment of the Jews, it didn't change the government policy towards the Jews. Inspired by Nazi German terminology, Bulgarian words meaning "internees" (''internirani'' or ''vŭdvoreni'') did not appear in official documents, with the Jews deported to the provinces referred to as out-going "resettlers" (''izselnitsi'').
Anti-Jewish propaganda and legislation
The beginning of anti-Jewish policies in Bulgaria could be traced back to 1939, but the escalation of those into a nationwide phenomenon was greatly contributed to by Alexander Belev and the Law for Protection of the Nation in 1940. The passing of the law by Parliament in January 1941 paved the way for the first deportations to take place in November of the same year.
Anti-Jewish propaganda gradually intensified with Bulgaria's rising economic and political dependence on Nazi Germany. This led to the introduction of antisemitic legislation, starting with the Law for Protection of the Nation in 1940. This restricted the civil rights of Jews and was complemented by further laws, such as the establishment of a Commission on Jewish Affairs on 29 August 1942. The commission was tasked with the organisation of the expulsion of Jews and the liquidation of their property. This Act can be interpreted as the immediate precursor of the decision to deport Jews to extermination camps in March 1943.
Expressions of dissent grew as Bulgarians protested against any Jews being deported from Bulgarian soil, and the
Bulgarian government
The Council of Ministers ( bg, Министерски съвет, ''Ministerski savet'') is the main authority of the executive power in the Republic of Bulgaria. It consists of the Prime Minister of Bulgaria and all the specialized ministers ...
was flooded with petitions from organisations of writers, artists, lawyers, and religious leaders, among others. Former Bulgarian diplomat and attorney Dr. Ivan Dimitrov Strogov was one of those who petitioned Tsar Boris III. His letter admonishing the government's decision to deport Bulgarian Jewry is one such that moved the Tsar to communicate his own change in perspective on the matter. Tsar Boris III was persuaded, after fierce and prolonged debate, to withdraw his decision to send Bulgarian Jews across the border. The anti-deportation effort was headed by Dimitar Peshev, deputy speaker of the legislature. Metropolitans Kiril and Stefan led the protest by the religious community.
Forced Labour
Compulsory labour service (''trudova povinnost'') was initially instituted in Bulgaria in 1920 by the radical Agrarian government of
Aleksandar Stamboliyski
Aleksandar Stoimenov Stamboliyski ( bg, Александър Стоименов Стамболийски; 1 March 1879 – 14 June 1923) was the prime minister of Bulgaria from 1919 until 1923.
Stamboliyski was a member of the Agrarian Union, ...
in place of compulsory military service, which had been prohibited under the
Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine
The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine (french: Traité de Neuilly-sur-Seine) required Bulgaria to cede various territories, after Bulgaria had been one of the Central Powers defeated in World War I. The treaty was signed on 27 November 1919 at Neuilly ...
. All able-bodied Bulgarians, except those exempted for legitimate reasons and those who have served the state for more than three consecutive months, were required to serve either in the Regular service (eight months maximum for men between 20 and 40 years, four months for women between 16 and 30 years) or in the Temporary service up to 21 days a year. Labour service proved effective in carrying out post-war reconstruction through road and railway construction, manufacturing, agriculture and reforestation projects. From 1921 to 1936 a total of 313,669 "trudovaks" (labourers) were recorded as completing their compulsory service.
In the 1930s, as Bulgaria followed Germany in repudiating the military limitations imposed by the WW1 Paris peace treaties labour service was militarised. On 1 Jan 1935 it was renamed the labour corps (''trudovi voiski'') and jurisdiction was transferred from the Ministry of Public Works to the Ministry of Defence, with the establishment of
military
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...
ranks in 1936. In 1938 with the signing of the Salonika Agreement Bulgaria was able to fully reinstate
compulsory military service
Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...
, reducing conscription to the labour corps.
However, in Jan 1941 the Law for Protection of the Nation came into effect, which required Jews to fulfil their military service by participating in labor battalions and required that all Jews be treated as dangerous subversives. By order of the Bulgarian chief of the general staff, effective 27 January 1941, all Jews were removed from the regular armed forces. Military-aged Jewish conscripts were drafted in the labour corps and formed in Jewish labour units (''trudovi druzhini''). Jewish reservists who had already fulfilled their military or labour service were allocated as labour corps reservists.
After Bulgaria finally joined the Tripartite Pact on 1 March 1941 and became a base for German military operations against Yugoslavia and Greece repressive measures against the Jews increased. With a ministerial order on 29 Jan 1942 Jewish labour units were subordinated to the Temporary Labour Service of the Ministry of Public Works, depriving them of their military ranks and privileges.
Mandatory conscription applied from August 1941: initially men aged 20–44 were drafted, with the age limit rising to 45 in July 1942 and 50 a year later. The Jews in forced labour were faced with discriminatory policies which became stricter as time went on; with increasing length of service and decreasing the allowance of food, rest, and days off.
1941
The first camps established expressly for Jewish forced labour were opened in spring 1941, with conscripts beginning their work on 1 May. The deployment was supposed to last five months and most were released on 1 October, but some were dismissed only in November. In 1941, under overall command of ''
General-Major
Major general (abbreviated MG, maj. gen. and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. The disappearance of the "sergeant" in the title explains the apparent confusion of a ...
'' Anton Stefanov Ganev, the conditions were less harsh than in the subsequent three years, because of the infrastructure of the existing Bulgarian forced labour service and the traditional employment of minorities barred from carrying weapons as uniformed engineering auxiliaries in ethnically segregated units. Turks,
Pomaks
Pomaks ( bg, Помаци, Pomatsi; el, Πομάκοι, Pomáki; tr, Pomaklar) are Bulgarian-speaking Muslims inhabiting northwestern Turkey, Bulgaria and northeastern Greece. The c. 220,000 strong ethno-confessional minority in Bulgaria is ...
, and
Romani
Romani may refer to:
Ethnicities
* Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia
** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule
* Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...
men of military age were already drafted this way, and while
second-class citizen
A second-class citizen is a person who is systematically and actively discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or a legal resident there. While not necessarily slaves, ...
s, the compulsory work was not penal servitude. Labourers were not entitled to military insignia, but were issued uniforms and military boots and allowed medical treatment. In addition, in 1941 the army continued to classify Jewish junior officers and
non-commissioned officer
A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is a military officer who has not pursued a commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. (Non-officers, which includes most or all enli ...
s as "reservists" and allowed them uniforms suiting their rank and command over Jews of other ranks; this ended the following year. Nonetheless, the Jews were discriminated against; the upper age limit for labour duty was much higher for Jews than for Muslims, and unlike the Muslim draftees, the Jews were required to continue serving every year until they were either too old or unfit. Jews were detailed to do heavy construction work, while regulation practice was that in forced labour battalions (''druzhina''), all service personnelmedical, clerical, and signal staff, together with cooks and orderlieswere ethnic Bulgarians. Jewish labourers continued to be paid, though their wages were less than Bulgarians' were.
With Bulgaria not actively at war in 1941, the forced labourers were deployed on infrastructure projects, as they had been through the 1930s. In August 1941, at the request of Adolf-Heinz BeckerleGerman Minister Plenipotentiary at Sofiathe War Ministry relinquished control of all Jewish forced labour to the Ministry of Buildings, Roads, and Public Works. Throughout the year, propaganda and news of German victories intensified antisemitism in Bulgaria, both against the labourers and their families, and expulsion or extermination of the Jews was openly advocated. That summer, ''
Generalmajor
is the Germanic variant of major general, used in a number of Central and Northern European countries.
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
is the second lowest general officer rank in the Royal Danish Army and Royal Danish Air Force. As a two-star ...
Reich Labour Service
The Reich Labour Service (''Reichsarbeitsdienst''; RAD) was a major organisation established in Nazi Germany as an agency to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarise the workforce and indoctrinate it with Naz ...
(''Reichsarbeitsdienst''), visited Bulgaria. A command from the labour corps headquarters in Sofia forbidding Jewish conscripts to take photographs regarded as "military" came on 28 October 1941, a sign the Jews' situation was worsening, and in 1942 the treatment of Jews in forced labour became far harsher.
1942
From 1942 all Jews were entirely denied military status, whether officers, NCOs, or other ranks. Administration of Jewish forced labour was transferred to the civilian Ministry of Public Works or OSPB (''Ministerstvo na obshtestvenite sgradi, pŭtishtata i blagoustroistvoto''), within which a new "Bureau of Temporary Labour" or OVTP (''Otdel vremenna trudova povinnost'') was set up, and forced labour units of Jews, Turks, ethnic Serbs, and "unemployed" (that is, Roma) were attached to new OVTP labour battalions. The word "temporary" in the OVTP's name presaged the genocide planned for them. On 29 January 1942, new all-Jewish forced labour battalions had been announced; their number was doubled to twenty-four by the end of 1942. Jewish units were separated from the other ethnicitiesthree quarters of the labour battalions were from minorities: Turks, Russians, and residents of the territories occupied by Bulgariathe rest were drawn from the Bulgarian "unemployed".
Military vocabulary was eschewed: each labour "battalion" (''druzhina'') was renamed "detachment" (''otryad''); "companies" were renamed "work groups" (''trudovi grupi''), each divided into "sections" (''yadrovi''). Forced labourers were no longer issued boots or uniforms, and had to work in civilian clothes and shoes unsuited to hard wear and extremes of weather in marshes and mountainsides; Jewish labourers were furthermore required to wear yellow badges. Nonetheless, military control over the labour battalions continued, because the government's "twin goals of somehow motivating the Jews to achieve results on construction projects, while simultaneously humiliating, robbing, beating, and undernourishing them, constituted a dilemma. A purely civilian entity lacked the means for resolving it." The Jewish company command structure of 1941 was considered too lenient towards desertion to conscripts' families in nearby cities. From 1942, Bulgarians replaced Jews in the commands of the Jewish labour units; Jewish former officers and NCOs were demoted to the ranks. In command was ''
Polkovnik
''Polkovnik'' (russian: полковник, lit=regimentary; pl, pułkownik) is a military rank used mostly in Slavic-speaking countries which corresponds to a colonel in English-speaking states and oberst in several German-speaking and Scandin ...
'' Nikola Halachev, with ''Polkovnik'' Ivan Ivanov and ''
Podpolkovnik
''Podpolkovnik'' (russian: подполко́вник, lit=sub –, junior – , or lower regimentary) is a military rank in Slavic and nearby countries which corresponds to the lieutenant colonel in the English-speaking states and military.
...
'' Todor Boichev Atanasov under him as inspectors.
Both Halachev and Atanasov displayed undisguised antisemitism. On 14 July 1942 Halachev announced new strictures: inveighing against desertion and failures to report for duty, he ordered that a punishment detachment be set up to work through the winter on a new railway line to
Sidirokastro
Sidirokastro ( el, Σιδηρόκαστρο; Bulgarian and Macedonian: ''Valovišta''; tr, Demirhisar) is a town and a former municipality in the Serres regional unit, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipali ...
(''Demir-Hisar'') in occupied Greece. On the same day, deprivation of mattresses or of hot food, a "bread-and-water diet", and the barring of visitors were authorized. Visits, leave, letters and packages could be denied for three months at a time, while warm food could be withheld or bread and water rations imposed for ten consecutive days, mattresses denied for twenty days, and blankets denied indefinitely. Any of these punishments could be imposed concurrently. Confinement to the
brig
A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square rig, square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the ...
was to be avoided as a punishment and these measures allowed work to continue while deprivation was enforced. A week afterwards, on 22 July, Halachev again railed against the Jews in a memorandum, castigating desertion and malingering in the infirmaries; he then forbade Jews from visiting settlements near their work sites, on the pretext that they might be able to communicate using the post office. On 15 September, Halachev banned Jewish conscripts from meeting their wives and required that food parcels Jews received had to be shared among the units.
A new tax confiscating most Jews' liquid assets was imposed summer 1942, along with the duty of all Jews to wear yellow badges. In August 1942, the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs was created and began to register the Jewish populations of Bulgarian territory, including the occupied lands, in preparation for their deportation into Nazi hands, organized since February by the Commissioner Belev. The OVTP was not, however, informed of the Commissariat's plans, and it continued to plan its construction timetables on the assumption that its Jewish work force would be available for work in the 1943 season.
1943
On 4 February 1943 Belev had recommended to the Council of Ministers that "swift measures" be taken to ensure the Jewish men working as forced labourers would not escape. His Commissariat for Jewish Affairs planned the destruction of Bulgaria's Jews before the end of the year. In the course of 1943 nearly all Jews in Bulgaria were incarcerated in prisons, camps, or ghettos. As the war progressed, and round-ups of Jews began in 1943, Jews made more numerous efforts to escape and punishments became increasingly harsh. Halachev was replaced in command of the forced labour corps by ''Polkovnik'' Tsvetan Mumdzhiev. Under him were his inspectors ''Podpolkovnik'' Cholakov and ''Podpolkovnik'' Rogozarov. Mumdzhiev had commanded military labourers in 1940, during the acquisition of South Dobruja, and in 1941 Rogazarov had been commander of the 1st Jewish Labour Battalion and was known to be humane towards conscripts. At the end of March 1943, some Jewish labourers who had been doctors or pharmacists were seconded to the military districts to prevent a shortage of medical skills.
The work season mandated for conscripts began earlier than before, with some forced labourers summoned before the end of January. Jews of conscription age in occupied Macedonia were not called up, however, and remained at home while others travelled to their work sites. Mumdzhiev in February sought to eradicate the widespread practice of extorting bribes from prisoners for the granting of home leave. The divergence in policy between the OVTP and the Jewish Affairs Commissariat grew in the spring; Mumdzhiev granted, in accordance with standard army procedures compassionate leave to many Jewish forced labourers, on the grounds their families' looming expulsion from Bulgaria constituted a family emergency. Many also deserted without leave to see their families, but even deserters remained under the OVTP's jurisdictionunlike all the rest of Bulgaria's Jews, the Commissariat of Jewish Affairs had no control over the OVTP's forced labourers (or those in prison and directly under Interior Ministry control), and they were thus near-immune from deportations organized by Belev. In occupied Thrace, male Greek Jews were conscripted in 1943, but their families were deported to Bulgaria and thence to Treblinka. Asked to intervene on behalf of these homeless Jews by the Jews of his native city of Plovdiv, Mumdzhiev issued indefinite furlough documents, rather than their seasonal leave papers, at the end of the work season and "several dozen" Jews were thus shielded from the Jewish Commissariat's purview.
Jews forced to work on the new railway between
Krupnik
Krupnik (Polish language, Polish, or Krupnikas (Lithuanian language, Lithuanian) is a traditional sweet alcoholic drink similar to a liqueur, based on grain spirit (usually vodka) and honey, popular in Poland and Lithuania. In Poland it is grou ...
and
Sidirokastro
Sidirokastro ( el, Σιδηρόκαστρο; Bulgarian and Macedonian: ''Valovišta''; tr, Demirhisar) is a town and a former municipality in the Serres regional unit, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipali ...
were expected to continue work until 15 December, though in the event Mumdzhiev ordered in October that the ill-equipped Jews be allowed to stop working on 15 November. Others working at
Lovech
Lovech ( bg, Ловеч, Lovech, ) is a List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, city in north-central Bulgaria. It is the administrative centre of the Lovech Province and of the subordinate Lovech Municipality. The city is located about northeast f ...
were only dismissed in early December. It is not known when or if the instructions of Belev on increased security at the camps were passed to the OVTP, but it appears they were not implemented. Jewish forced labourers deserted much more often than those from other ethnicities, as most of their families had been evicted from their homes and were now restricted to transit camps and temporary ghettos to await deportation from Bulgaria; Jewish men often returned with cash their families had given them in fear of impending deportation. Although by 1944 the effective danger of deportation had passed, this was not known to the Jews, who continued to fear imminent deportation. In the winter of 1943–1944, the Jewish labourers were released from work to the temporary transit camps and ghettos established by the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, rather than to their homes, from which most of their families were evicted earlier in 1943.
1944
The war was now against Germany, and the increasing successes of partisans in Bulgarian territory worsened friction between Jews and their Bulgarian overseers. Mumdzhiev's attempts to alleviate conditions at the forced labour camps was unevenly adhered to, and the dispositions of individual camp commanders towards the Jews led to varying levels of abuses. The forced labourers were again deployed to work camps mostly building motorways and roads. By autumn, the approach of the Red Army was the catalyst for mass desertions from the labour camps: by 5 September one Jewish unit lost 20% of its labourers and by 9 September, fewer than 20% were left and the '' feldfebel'' in command appealed in vain for the police in Plovdiv to arrest the deserters. Slowly, the Jewish forced labourers returned to their former hometowns, along with the residents of the ghettos. The general in command of the forced labour deployments, ''Polkovnik'' Tsvetan Mumdzhiev was a defendant in the ''People's Court Panel VII'' Holocaust trial, but petitions in his favour from labourers caused his acquittal.
Labour Service
The Law for Protection of the Nation creates precedents and inconsistencies with other Bulgarian laws, including the Law on Military Forces. Many Jews who have been assigned to the military have to be released from service. They return to their homes and freely indulge in their peacetime activities. The Civilian Mobilization Directorate in a report recommends the Jews, that had to be recruited in the military to be redirected to the state Labor Forcea special branch, established in 1920, militarised in 1940 and existing until 2000. Shortly after this report, a special ordinance was promulgated governing the service of the Jews in the army, which stipulates that they will be called up for employment under the Military Forces Law. They were recruited in
companies
A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of people, whether natural, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specific, declared go ...
in which along the soldiers, can serve
sergeants
Sergeant (abbreviated to Sgt. and capitalized when used as a named person's title) is a rank in many uniformed organizations, principally military and policing forces. The alternative spelling, ''serjeant'', is used in The Rifles and other uni ...
and
officers
An officer is a person who has a position of authority in a hierarchical organization. The term derives from Old French ''oficier'' "officer, official" (early 14c., Modern French ''officier''), from Medieval Latin ''officiarius'' "an officer," f ...
with Jewish descent. They are recruited to do their regular labour service and the ones called for training have all the obligations and rights set out in the 1936 Disciplinary Code for Employment. To this end, Major-General Anton Ganev, the Chief of the Labor Force, issues an order defining the structure and composition in terms of the recruited for training and service, as well as the mobilised ranks. In an complementary order from 18 April 1941 Gen. Ganev points out that the relations with the Jews must be based on strictly established legal norms. Having in mind that most of the recruited Jews have not used on physical work they were required to meet at least 50% of the norm in the first week, 66% in the second, 75% in the third and from the third to work in accordance with the established standards. The Jewish workers have all the obligations and enjoy all the rights that the Bulgarian workers have. With an order from 14 July 1941 Gen. Ganev defines their salary, and with another order the sergeants and officers from Jewish descent get 15 days home leave in August and September 1941.
On 29 January 1942 the Minister of Defence of Bulgaria issues a new ordinance regarding the service of citizens of Jewish origin, according to which their military service in Labour Force is replaced with labour service at the Ministry of Public Buildings, Roads and Public Works. It retained the mechanism for engaging Bulgarian Jews to protect them from the escalation of their persecution by engaging in the Labor Force system, giving additional flexibility to the entire system of parrying the external pressure on the Jewish issue.Prof. colonel Dimitar Nedyalkov, D.Sc. - How Labour Force saved Bulgarian Jews /ref> The Jews that were found unfit for work were released from duty. During the autumn and winter the groups were released and the labour soldiers returned to their homes, so they can come to work at the next spring.
In his diary the Prime Minister Bogdan Filov, after meeting with Tsar Boris on April 13, 1943, noted: "We then spoke on the Jewish issue. The Tzar thinks that we should take the able-bodied into working groups and thus avoid sending the Jews from the old borders to
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
. In his secret letter to the Legation Counselor Eberhard von Thadden, the police attaché Adolf Hoffmann at the German Embassy in Sofia on May 17, 1943 wrote: "The Bulgarian government too transparently uses the labor force of the Jews solely as a pretext against our desired deportation of the Jews, the purpose of which is to evade it."
Rescue
The Bulgarian government provided no protection to the Jews in Macedonia and
Thrace
Thrace (; el, Θράκη, Thráki; bg, Тракия, Trakiya; tr, Trakya) or Thrake is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe, now split among Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, which is bounded by the Balkan Mountains to t ...
Jewish problem
The Jewish question, also referred to as the Jewish problem, was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century European society that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other " national ...
, met little resistance when he sent Jews to the
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
.
Tsar
Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East Slavs, East and South Slavs, South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''Caesar (title), caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" i ...
Boris III
Boris III ( bg, Борѝс III ; Boris Treti; 28 August 1943), originally Boris Klemens Robert Maria Pius Ludwig Stanislaus Xaver (Boris Clement Robert Mary Pius Louis Stanislaus Xavier) , was the Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1918 until h ...
was reportedly not antisemitic; despite the risk of being branded a British agent, he sympathized with the Jews and used his influence to help them.
According to the confidential agreement on February 22, 1943 between Belev and Dannecker, 20,000 Jews from the "New Lands" had to be deported. There were only about 12,000 Jews there, so the remaining 8,000 were to be collected from Old Bulgaria. The communities in
Kyustendil
Kyustendil ( bg, Кюстендил ) is a town in the far west of Bulgaria, the capital of the Kyustendil Province, a former bishopric and present Latin Catholic titular see.
The town is situated in the southern part of the Kyustendil Valley, ...
and
Plovdiv
Plovdiv ( bg, Пловдив, ), is the second-largest city in Bulgaria, standing on the banks of the Maritsa river in the historical region of Thrace. It has a population of 346,893 and 675,000 in the greater metropolitan area. Plovdiv is the c ...
were targeted first, followed by
Dupnitza
Dupnitsa, or Dupnica ( bg, Дупница (previously ), ), is a town in Western Bulgaria. It is at the foot of the highest mountains in the Balkan Peninsula – the Rila Mountains, and about south of the capital Sofia. Dupnitsa is the second la ...
,
Gorna Dzhumaya
Blagoevgrad ( bg, Благоевград ) is а town in Southwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Blagoevgrad Municipality and of Blagoevgrad Province. With a population of almost inhabitants, it is the economic and cultural centre ...
and
Pazardzhik
Pazardzhik ( bg, Пазарджик ) is a city situated along the banks of the Maritsa river, southern Bulgaria. It is the capital of Pazardzhik Province and centre for the homonymous Pazardzhik Municipality.
The Tatars founded Pazardzhik in t ...
. On March 2, the Council of Ministers adopted seven decrees concerning the deportation of Jews; the final decree was about the deportation of up to 20,000 Jews from the "newly-liberated territories" in cooperation with German authorities.The power of the civil society: Proceedings of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on the Rescue of the Jews in Bulgaria (1940-1944) Sofia, 2005, The Sofia University Center for Jewish Studies, Sofia University Press St. Kliment Ohridski, , p. 117 According to the plan, activities began on March 4 in Thrace, on March 9 in the "old lands", and on March 11 in Macedonia. Action began in Kyustendil, where the local Jews were prepared for deportation in the Fernandes tobacco warehouse in accordance with the Bulgarian-German agreement. News about their imminent deportation was leaked, and efforts began to save them.Assoc. Prof. Rumyana Dimitrova Marinova-Christidi, Ph.D. - Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" - "The Fate of the Bulgarian Jews during the Holocaust – the Menace, the Rescue, the Aliya" /ref>
On March 9, 1943, a delegation from Kyustendil ( Assen Switchmezov, Petar Mihalev, Ivan Momchilov and Vladimir Kurtev) arrived in Sofia to negotiate the cancellation of the deportation and contacted
National Assembly
In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...
deputy chairman
Dimitar Peshev
Dimitar Peshev ( bg, Димитър Пешев; 25 June 1894 – 20 February 1973) was the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Bulgaria and Minister of Justice (1935–1936), before World War II. He rebelled against the pro-Nazi cabinet and ...
. That day, Peshev and 10 other MPs forced Interior Minister
Petar Gabrovski
Petar Dimitrov Gabrovski () (9 July 1898 – 1 February 1945) was a Bulgarian politician who briefly served as Prime Minister during the Second World War. Gabrovski was a lawyer by profession. He was also a member of the Grand Masonic Lodge o ...
to revoke the deportation order. On March 17, Peshev and another 42 MPs filed a protest with
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
Bogdan Filov against the deportation of Jews from Bulgaria. The government then hid its intentions, and Peshev was removed from office after the National Assembly censured him on March 26, 1943.The power of the civil society: Proceedings of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on the Rescue of the Jews in Bulgaria (1940-1944) Sofia, 2005, The Sofia University Center for Jewish Studies, Sofia University Press St. Kliment Ohridski, , p. 118
On May 2, 1943, after Germany increased pressure on the Bulgarian authorities, the government prepared a second deportation campaign. This time, the plan included all 48,000 Bulgarian Jews. There were two different plans; Plan A called for the immediate deportation of all 48,000 Jews, and plan B mandated the relocation of all Jews from
Sofia
Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and ha ...
to the countryside. Boris III chose plan B. The Bulgarian public interpreted the expulsion of Sofia's Jews as the first step in their deportation from the country. On May 21, 1943, the government authorized the Commissariat of Jewish Affairs to move all "persons of Jewish origin" living in Sofia to villages and towns in the Bulgarian countryside except for those married to "persons of non-Jewish origin", baptized before July 29, 1942, or ill with a contagious disease.
Throughout the country, protesters threatened to block the
Holocaust trains
Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the '' Deutsche Reichsbahn'' national railway system under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocau ...
by lying on the railroad tracks. Ordinary citizens and religious leaders, including Bishop Kiril of Plovdiv, participated. Boris III was dissuaded from continuing the deportations and assigned Jews to forced-labour camps throughout the country, telling
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
that Bulgaria needed them for railroad construction and other industrial work.
A May 24 protest in Sofia against the relocations was organized by about a thousand Jews and supported by other Bulgarians, including communists and Metropolitan Stefan of Sofia (who condemned government persecution of the Jews in a speech). The protest was dispersed by the police; 120 Jews were arrested and brought to the concentration camp in Somovit, and other activists were scattered throughout the country. Later that day, Metropolitan Stefan advocated for the Jews to Prime Minister Filov and tried to contact Boris III (who was away from Sofia) with his cabinet leader Pavel Gruev. Despite Commissar Alexander Belev’s efforts, he failed to deport all of Bulgaria's Jews from the country.The power of the civil society: Proceedings of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on the Rescue of the Jews in Bulgaria (1940-1944) Sofia, 2005, The Sofia University Center for Jewish Studies, Sofia University Press St. Kliment Ohridski, , p. 119 On May 25, Jews in the larger cities began to be deported to work camps across Bulgaria. The deportation of Jews from Sofia began the following day, and 19,153 had left the capital by June 7.
Across the country, deported Jews were sheltered in the homes of local Jews or housed in empty schools. Their living conditions were difficult, but their survival was guaranteed. Deportation to Poland, the legal framework, was neither canceled nor implemented. Historians differ about who should receive the most credit for the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews: the Tsar, the church, the politicians who interfered, or the Bulgarian people. Resistance to the antisemitic policy indicated that antisemitism was foreign to Bulgarian society.
The Jews from Thrace and Macedonia (the "new lands") had a worse fate. The Thracian Jews were transported by train to Lom on March 18 and 19, where they were placed on barges bound for Vienna. From Vienna, they were deported to Katowice and
Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
by train. The Macedonian Jews were deported to Auschwitz on March 22 and 25, and to the
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
on March 29. Of 11,343 people, only 12 survived.
Ghettos
Between early 1943 and late 1944 nearly all Bulgaria's surviving Jews were confined involuntarily to ghettos and transit camps as well as to the labour camps and prisons. After the protests of Dimitar Peshev and a
sit-in
A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...
at the office of Petar Gabrovski prompted the deferment of plans for the extermination of the remaining 8,000 Jews of the Belev-Dannecker agreement, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs Alexander Belev drew up new plans for the deportations of all Jews to be completed by September 1943. Sofia, home to half of the Jewish population, was the greatest logistical problem, and Belev arranged for a survey of vacant schools and Jewish residences throughout the provinces to determine where deportees from Sofia might be forcibly
billet
A billet is a living-quarters to which a soldier is assigned to sleep. Historically, a billet was a private dwelling that was required to accept the soldier.
Soldiers are generally billeted in barracks or garrisons when not on combat duty, alth ...
ed in the homes of local Jews to form temporary transit ghettos before their final expulsion from Bulgaria; no consideration was given to spatial adequacy. In addition to the existing transit camps at Gorna Dzhumaya (
Blagoevgrad
Blagoevgrad ( bg, Благоевград ) is а town in Southwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Blagoevgrad Municipality and of Blagoevgrad Province. With a population of almost inhabitants, it is the economic and cultural centre ...
) and Dupnitsa, another was planned at the existing internment camp at Somivit, the Danube port from where, as well Lom, Jews would be embarked on boats to transport the victims upriver out of Bulgaria. Belev had chartered six steamships for the Jews' journey and they waited in the Danube ports. Families were to be deported together, but without the working age men, who were deployed at the forced labour camps.
The first evictions were those from Sofia and
Kazanlak
Kazanlak ( bg, Казанлък , Thracian and Greek Σευθόπολις (''Seuthopolis''), tr, Kazanlık) is a Bulgarian town in Stara Zagora Province, located in the middle of the plain of the same name, at the foot of the Balkan mountai ...
, whose deported Jews were distributed to the temporary ghettos as planned. Their belongings were seized and the property inventoried and sold at auction by the Jewish Affairs Commissariat. Sofia's Jews were expelled from the 24 May 1943 and were deported to
Berkovitsa
Berkovitsa ( bg, Берковица ) is a town and ski resort in northwestern Bulgaria. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Berkovitsa Municipality, Montana Province and is close to the town of Varshets. , it has a population of 13 ...
,
Burgas
Burgas ( bg, Бургас, ), sometimes transliterated as ''Bourgas'', is the second largest city on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast in the region of Northern Thrace and the fourth-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia, Plovdiv, and Varna, with a popu ...
,
Byala Slatina
Byala Slatina ( bg, Бяла Слатина ) is a town in Northwestern Bulgaria. It is located in Vratsa Province
Vratsa Province ( bg, Област Враца ''Oblast Vraca'', former name Vraca okrug) is a Bulgarian province located in th ...
, Dupnitsa,
Ferdinand
Ferdinand is a Germanic name composed of the elements "protection", "peace" (PIE "to love, to make peace") or alternatively "journey, travel", Proto-Germanic , abstract noun from root "to fare, travel" (PIE , "to lead, pass over"), and "co ...
,
Gorna Dzhumaya
Blagoevgrad ( bg, Благоевград ) is а town in Southwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Blagoevgrad Municipality and of Blagoevgrad Province. With a population of almost inhabitants, it is the economic and cultural centre ...
,
Haskovo
Haskovo ( bg, Хасково ) is a city in the region of Northern Thrace in southern Bulgaria and the administrative centre of the Haskovo Province, not far from the borders with Greece and Turkey. According to Operative Program Regional Develo ...
,
Karnobat
Karnobat ( bg, Карнобат ) is a town in the Burgas Province, Southeastern Bulgaria. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Karnobat Municipality. According to the 2021 census, the town has a population of 16,483 inhabitants.htt ...
,
Kyustendil
Kyustendil ( bg, Кюстендил ) is a town in the far west of Bulgaria, the capital of the Kyustendil Province, a former bishopric and present Latin Catholic titular see.
The town is situated in the southern part of the Kyustendil Valley, ...
Pleven
Pleven ( bg, Плèвен ) is the seventh most populous city in Bulgaria. Located in the northern part of the country, it is the administrative centre of Pleven Province, as well as of the subordinate Pleven municipality. It is the biggest ...
,
Razgrad
Razgrad ( bg, Разград ) is a city in Northeastern Bulgaria in the valley of the Beli Lom river that falls within the historical and geographical region of Ludogorie (Deliorman). It is an administrative center of Razgrad Province.
Etymolog ...
,
Ruse
Ruse may refer to:
Places
*Ruse, Bulgaria, a major city of Bulgaria
**Ruse Municipality
** Ruse Province
** 19th MMC – Ruse, a constituency
*Ruše, a town and municipality in north-eastern Slovenia
* Ruše, Žalec, a small settlement in east-ce ...
,
Samokov
Samokov ( bg, Самоков ) is a town in Sofia Province in the southwest of Bulgaria. It is situated in a basin between the mountains Rila and Vitosha, 55 kilometres from the capital Sofia. Due to the suitable winter sports conditions, Sam ...
,
Shumen
Shumen ( bg, Шумен, also romanized as ''Shoumen'' or ''Šumen'', ) is the tenth largest city in Bulgaria and the administrative and economic capital of Shumen Province.
Etymology
The city was first mentioned as ''Šimeonis'' in 1153 by t ...
,
Troyan
Troyan ( bg, Троян ) List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, is a town remembering the name of Roman Emperor Trajan, in Lovech Province in central Bulgaria with population of 21,997 inhabitants, as of December 2009. It is the administrative ...
,
Varna
Varna may refer to:
Places Europe
*Varna, Bulgaria, a city in Bulgaria
**Varna Province
**Varna Municipality
** Gulf of Varna
**Lake Varna
**Varna Necropolis
*Vahrn, or Varna, a municipality in Italy
*Varniai, a city in Lithuania
* Varna (Šaba ...
,
Vidin
Vidin ( bg, Видин, ; Old Romanian: Diiu) is a port city on the southern bank of the Danube in north-western Bulgaria. It is close to the borders with Romania and Serbia, and is also the administrative centre of Vidin Province, as well as o ...
, and
Vratsa
Vratsa ( bg, Враца ) is the largest city in northwestern Bulgaria and the administrative and economic centre of the municipality of Vratsa and Vratsa district. It is located about 112 km north of Sofia, 40 km southeast of Montana.
...
. Some were also sent to
Stara Zagora
Stara Zagora ( bg, Стара Загора, ) is the sixth-largest city in Bulgaria, and the administrative capital of the homonymous Stara Zagora Province.
Name
The name comes from the Slavic root ''star'' ("old") and the name of the medieva ...
, but were shortly afterwards expelled again and dispersed elsewhere on the orders of the Bulgarian Army, which operated a base there and objected to the Jews' presence in the city. The Jews' billets in the residences of local Jews operated as so-called open ghettos, within which Jews were confined by specific movement restrictions and a general and punitive curfew. Jews were banned from public amenities, were allowed outdoors for only a few hours a day, could not leave their assigned towns at all, and were forbidden to engage in any commerce. Jews were barred from living together with non-Jews, "Jewish residences" (''Evreisko zhilishte'') had to be marked as such, and Jewish people had to mark themselves with yellow badges. The tight curfew was intended to keep the Jews concentrated to facilitate their eviction ''en masse'' at short notice, but because the ghettoization was intended to be temporary, the Jewish Affairs Commissariat did not formulate permanent ghetto restrictions centrally; instead it was the Commissariat's local "delegate", the municipal governments, and the police that were responsible for the varied ghetto policies imposed in each town. According to the ''Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos'', the spring deportations' postponement left the Jewish population "in limbo — demoted to an untouchable
subcaste
Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural ...
status, penniless, uprooted, and removed from the
body politic
The body politic is a polity—such as a city, realm, or state—considered metaphorically as a physical body. Historically, the sovereign is typically portrayed as the body's head, and the analogy may also be extended to other anatomical par ...
, yet not expelled beyond the country’s borders".
The authority of Belev's Commissariat did not extend to non-Jews, and in consequence, it was unable to fully segregate the Jewish and non-Jewish populations by evicting non-Jews from areas deemed ghettos, which would have provoked opposition, since the Jews were invariably billeted in the older and more ethnically mixed districts, usually neighbourhoods of low-grade tenement housing. Neither did the Commissariat's powers enable it to construct physical barriers between Jews and non-Jews to create closed ghettos. The word ghetto () was not used officially; the euphemistic " Jewish Quarter" (''evreiski kvartal'') was applied instead.
Reception and legacy
The world's first Holocaust trial was held in Bulgaria in early 1945. Earlier wartime trials of had punished war criminals and others, but the "hastily convened" ''People's Court Panel VII'' tried 64 Bulgarian officials for crimes committed in the enforcement of the pro-Axis Bulgarian government's policies against the Jews as part of the Final Solution. The court was formed on the initiative of the Fatherland Front's Jewish committee. Unlike the later
Nuremberg trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945 ...
, and despite radical change to a communist-led government, the court's decisions were based on the pre-existing Bulgarian criminal code. Although this legitimized the new state, it made prosecutions for complicity in the mass murders itself difficult, because the regime had created the legal framework within which the crimes were lawful, like the 1940 ''Law for the Protection of the Nation'' and the 1942 decree-law. Instead, prosecutions were mainly for "incidental malfeasance" and convictions were hard to secure. Now fighting with the Soviets against the Nazis, the Bulgarian Army tried to shield from liability officers who had abused Jewish forced labourers and lawyers engaged in the liquidation of Jews' assets mostly escaped sanction. Most defendants were acquitted or received lenient penalties and most offenders were never charged. Two death sentences were handed down, including one for Alexander Belev, but he had already died in 1944 and was tried ''in absentia''. Shortly afterwards, records of the ''People's Court Panel VII'' trial were suppressed, including the "abundant testimony", and secreted, unpublished, in the exclusive archives of the communist
People's Republic of Bulgaria
The People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB; bg, Народна Република България (НРБ), ''Narodna Republika Balgariya, NRB'') was the official name of Bulgaria, when it was a socialist republic from 1946 to 1990, ruled by the ...
's Interior Ministry. Until the end of the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, they were seldom cited.
The post-war People's Republic, in accordance with communist principles, compared the survival of most of Bulgaria's wartime Jewish population to the rescue of the Jews from Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943. State-controlled
historiography
Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...
attributed the survival to principled and righteous popular action by the Bulgarian people inspired by the then-outlawed Bulgarian Communist Party in 1943. The fate of the Jews of Macedonia and Thrace was "simply ignored", by which means "the narrative cast Bulgaria alongside
Denmark
)
, song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast")
, song_type = National and royal anthem
, image_map = EU-Denmark.svg
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark
...
as a nation of rescuers, even exceeding that Scandinavian country in the percentage of Jews saved". One work to make the comparison was Haim Oliver's ''We Were Saved: How the Jews in Bulgaria Were Kept from the Death Camps'', published in Bulgarian and in English in 1967. Most of Bulgaria's surviving Jews emigrated soon after the war, joining the global ''
Aliyah
Aliyah (, ; he, עֲלִיָּה ''ʿălīyyā'', ) is the immigration of Jews from Jewish diaspora, the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel, which is in the modern era chiefly represented by the Israel, State of Israel ...
''. Some Jews who stayed in the country were committed Communists that assisted in spreading the story of the 'rescue' through various media including articles in the state-controlled Sofia Jewish organization's annual volume ''Godishnik'', and a small museum in Sofia. A publication by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1978 was typicalit was entitled: ''The Struggle of the Bulgarian People for the Defence and Salvation of the Jews in Bulgaria during the Second World War''.
After the November 1989 fall of Communism in Bulgaria, the fate of Bulgaria's Jews remained "a cornerstone of national pride" and "an unassailable historiographic ''
a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ...
''". Historiographical debate focused on who should be credited with responsibility for the early 1943 'rescue'. The Tsar, the Church, and the legislators led by Dimitar Peshev all joined the Communists among those to whom responsibility was being apportioned.
In reaction to the view promulgated officially by Communist Bulgarian state, a dissenting view emerged that Tsar Boris was not an antisemite or a convinced Nazi-sympathizer and should be credited with the Jews' survival.
Binyamin Arditi
Binyamin Arditi ( he, בנימין ארדיטי, 1 July 1897 – 20 May 1981) was an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Herut and Gahal between 1955 and 1965.
Biography
Born in Vienna, Arditi attended high school i ...
, an Israeli politician of Bulgarian Jewish origin and sometime chair of the pre-war Zionist Organization of Bulgaria in Sofia, published ''The Role of King Boris in the Expulsion of Bulgarian Jewry'' in 1952. The view that Boris had ordered the deportations was repeated in the first major academic account of the events outside Bulgaria, the 1972 ''The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution'', by Frederick B. Chary. Both Bulgarian writer Stephan Groueff's 1987 ''Crown of Thorns: The Reign of King Boris III of Bulgaria'' and Israeli politician Michael Bar-Zohar's 1998 ''Beyond Hitler’s Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews'' also took this view. The perspective favouring the Tsar was also useful to his son and briefly heir as Tsar Simeon II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. During his tenure as Prime Minister of Bulgaria under the name Simeon Sakskoburggotsk, a 2003 resolution in the
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...
honoured Bulgaria's saving of the Jews.
By contrast, in
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
controversy arose in 2000 over a memorial to Tsar Boris at
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
in
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
. A specially convened panel of jurists concluded there was historical evidence that showed Boris had personally approved the deportations of his Jewish subjects; the memorial in the Tsar's name was removed.
In 2008, Bulgarian President
Georgi Parvanov
Georgi Sedefchov Parvanov ( bg, Георги Седефчов Първанов, ) (born 28 June 1957) is a Bulgarian historian and politician who was President of Bulgaria from 2002 to 2012. He was elected after defeating incumbent Petar Sto ...
on a visit to Israel said Bulgaria accepted responsibility for the genocide of Jews deported from its jurisdiction. He said: "when we express justifiable pride at what we have done to save Jews, we do not forget that at the same time there was an anti-Semitic regime in Bulgaria and we do not shirk our responsibility for the fate of more than 11,000 Jews who were deported from Thrace and Macedonia to death camps".
The role of Dimitar Peshev, recognized as
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sav ...
by Yad Vashem, was emphasized by Italian journalist of Bulgarian Jewish heritage
Gabriele Nissim
Gabriele Nissim (born 1950) is an Italian journalist, historian and essayist whose works discuss Eastern Europe.
Biography
In 1982, Nissim founded ''L'Ottavo Giorno'' (The Eighth Day), an Italian magazine about the dissent in the Eastern Europea ...
in his 1998 ''L’uomo che fermò Hitler'' '"The Man Who Stopped Hitler''" His petition of 17 March 1943 was inspired by Jewish residents in his constituency, who were ultimately not exterminated on the same timetable as Jews outside the 1940 borders of Bulgaria as planned but were nonetheless deported from Kyustendil for ghettos in the countryside.
Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov (; ; bg, Цветан Тодоров; 1 March 1939 – 7 February 2017) was a Bulgarian- French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist. He was the author of many books and essays, which ...
highlighted Peshev's role in 1999 using excerpts of Peshev's post-war diary in ''La fragilité du bien: le sauvetage des juifs bulgares'' '"The Fragility of Good: the Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews"'' After the judgement reached in 2000 in Israel on the culpability of Boris III for the massacre of the Macedonian and Thracian Jews, Todorov's book's English translation was released in 2001 with the subtitle's wording changed to ''Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust''.
Also in 1999, Nissim's work ''L’uomo che fermò Hitler'' appeared in Bulgarian translation, published with assistance from the Bulgarian National Assembly. Subsequently, official commemoration of Peshev intensified. Statues, postage stamps, and other honours followed. In 2002, the Dimitar Peshev House-Museum was inaugurated in
Kyustendil
Kyustendil ( bg, Кюстендил ) is a town in the far west of Bulgaria, the capital of the Kyustendil Province, a former bishopric and present Latin Catholic titular see.
The town is situated in the southern part of the Kyustendil Valley, ...
, Peshev's home town, to commemorate his life and actions to prevent the deportation of Bulgarian Jews during the Holocaust. In 2013, a street intersection outside the Bulgarian embassy in
Washington, DC
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...
was named ''Dimitar Peshev Plaza''. This move was opposed by the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...
; the antisemitic ''Law for the Protection of the Nation'' was supported by Peshev in the winter of 1940-'1.''''
In 2002, the
synod
A synod () is a council of a Christian denomination, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. The word ''wikt:synod, synod'' comes from the meaning "assembly" or "meeting" and is analogous with the Latin ...
of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church published protocols (later translated into English and entitled ''The Power of Civil Society in a Time of Genocide: Proceedings of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on the Rescue of the Jews in Bulgaria, 1940-1944'') emphasizing the role its members played in the Bulgarian Jews survival, a perspective less politically fraught than praise of the Tsar. Proponents advocate the award of a corporate
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...
to the Church, in spite of a paucity of evidence that Church statements and the imprecations of the Metropolitans of Sofia and Plovdiv were heeded or anything other than dismissed by Boris.
March 10, 2016 – the 73rd anniversary of the rescue – was commemorated in Bulgaria as Holocaust Memorial Day.
A monument of gratitude for the rescue of Bulgarian Jews from the Holocaust was dedicated in the presence of the Israeli Ambassador and other dignitaries in
Bourgas
Burgas ( bg, Бургас, ), sometimes transliterated as ''Bourgas'', is List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, the second largest city on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast in the region of Northern Thrace and the fourth-largest in Bulgaria after So ...
, Bulgaria, 75 years after the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews and the deportation of Jews from areas of northern Greece and Yugoslavia under Bulgarian administration.
The rescue of the Bulgarian Jews has been feted by some historians, including Bulgarians and Jews alike, as a remarkable act of heroic defiance, while some other historians describe it as an "eleventh hour" episode of cynical opportunism that occurred due to the desire for favourable treatment if and when the Nazis lost the war, noting the much less rosy fate of Jews in Macedonia and Thrace, while still others take a middle position.Misha Glenny. ''The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers: 1804-1999''. Page 506.
In popular media
In 2012, ''
The Third Half
''The Third Half'' ( mk, Трето полувреме ) is a Macedonian-Czech-Serbian film that deals with Macedonian football during World War II, and the deportation of Jews from Macedonia. It is a story of love during wartime and a country's ...
'', a Macedonian-Czech-Serbian movie about Macedonian football during World War II, and the deportation of Jews from Yugoslav Macedonia presented through the real-life story of Neta Koen, a Holocaust survivor, was shortlisted as the country's entry for Best Foreign Language Oscar at the
85th Academy Awards
The 85th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best 2012 in film, films of 2012 and took place on February 24, 2013, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, Hollywood, ...
, but it did not make the final cut for nomination.
History of the Jews in Bulgaria
The history of the Jews in Bulgaria goes back almost 2,000 years. Jews have had a continuous presence in historic Bulgarian lands across the Danube, Bulgarian lands since before the 2nd century CE, and have often played an important part in ...
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Rescue of the Danish Jews
The Danish resistance movement, with the assistance of many Danish citizens, managed to evacuate 7,220 of Denmark's 7,800 Jews, plus 686 non-Jewish spouses, by sea to nearby neutral Sweden during the Second World War.The Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
Nazi war crimes
The governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany (under Adolf Hitler) ordered, organized and condoned a substantial number of war crimes, first in the Herero and Namaqua genocide and then in the World War I, First and World War II, Second Wo ...