History of The Jews in Bulgaria - Bulgarian Jews During World War II

Bulgarian Jews During World War II

During World War II, the Bulgarian Parliament and Tsar Boris III enacted the 1941 Law for the Protection of the Nation, which introduced numerous legal restrictions on Jews in Bulgaria. Specifically, the law prohibited Jews from voting, running for office, working in government positions, serving in the army, marrying or cohabitating with ethnic Bulgarians, using Bulgarian names, or owning rural land. The legislation also established quotas that limited the number of Jews in Bulgarian universities. Not only did Jewish leaders protest the law, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Bulgarian Workers' Party officials, twenty-one writers, and professional organizations also opposed.

Unlike some other Nazi Germany allies or German-occupied countries excluding Denmark and Finland, Bulgaria managed to save its entire 48,000-strong Jewish population during World War II from deportation to concentration camps, with Dimitar Peshev playing a crucial role in preventing the deportations, as well as Bulgarian Church officials and ordinary citizens. The story of the Bulgarian Jews during World War II has been told in "Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews" by Michael Bar-Zohar, an Israeli historian, politician and former Knesset member who was born in Bulgaria. On the subject is also a book by Tzvetan Todorov, a French intellectual born in Bulgaria and the Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.) in Paris. Todorov wrote "The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust" (published by Princeton Univ. Press), where he uses letters, diaries, government reports and memoirs to reconstruct what happened in Bulgaria during World War II, which led to the preservation of the lives of 50,000 Bulgarian Jews.

On the eve of the planned deportations requested by Nazi Germany, the Bulgarian government asked for a breakdown of the German plans for the eventual deportees, and was told that roughly one-half will be employed in agriculture in Greater Germany and one-fourth, reported to be semi-skilled laborers, will be "allowed to redeem themselves" by "volunteering to work" in the war industries of the Ruhr, while the remaining one-fourth will be transported to the Gouvernement General (German-occupied Poland) for employment in "work directly connected to the war". This information was also distributed to the neutral countries via German diplomatic channels and was reported on March 24, 1943 in the New York Times from Berne, Switzerland, along with the rather cynical statement that "the former death rate in the Jewish colonies of occupied Poland has shown a considerable decrease in the past three months", with the listed reason being that "now many of the male Jews are employed in army work near the fighting zones", and these receive approximately the same rations as German soldiers. Still hesitant to German deportation requests, in late 1942 and early 1943 the Bulgarian government utilized Swiss diplomatic channels to inquire whether possible deportations of the Jews can happen to British-controlled Palestine by ships from the Black Sea rather than to concentration camps in Poland by trains, about which rumors of mistreatment spread, and for which the Germans requested a significant amount of money. However, this attempt was blocked by the British Foreign Minister, Anthony Eden. Following that failure, Bulgarian authorities permitted Germany to deport the majority of the non-Bulgarian Jews in the areas of Bulgarian occupation zone in Greece and Yugoslavia which were under Bulgarian administration during the war. Thus, 4,500 Jews from Greek Thrace and Eastern Macedonia reached Poland, while 7,144 from Bulgarian occupied Vardar Macedonia and Pomoravlje reached Treblinka. None of them survived. Although Bulgaria had effectively controlled the regions immediately beyond its borders, German authorities, who were in charge, recognized only the Bulgarian military administration and not the civil one. Bulgaria granted citizenship both to all ethnic Bulgarians and to others who wished so in those territories, but not to Jews that were already beyond its borders. It is important to note, however, that the territories of Aegean Thrace, Macedonia and other lands controlled by Bulgaria during WW2 were not considered Bulgarian; they were only administered by Bulgaria, but Bulgaria had no say as to the affairs of these lands, following directives from Germany. In contrast with the old Bulgarian territories, where widespread protests against the deportations took place, including petitions to the Sofia government, in Aegean Thrace and Macedonia such organized movements were lacking. As to the Jews in the sovereign state of Bulgaria, deportation to the concentration camps was denied. Furthermore, Bulgaria was officially thanked by the government of Israel despite being an ally of Nazi Germany during the first part of WWII. This story was kept secret by the Soviet Union because the fascist Bulgarian government, the King of Bulgaria and the Church were responsible for the huge public outcry at the time, causing the majority of the country to defend its Jewish population. The communist Soviet regime could not countenance credit to be given to the former authorities, the Church or the King, as all three were considered enemies of communism. Thus, the documentation proving the saving of Bulgaria's Jews was suppressed until the end of the Cold War in 1989. Only then did the story come to light. The number of 48 000 Jews was known to Hitler, yet not one was deported or murdered by the Nazis.

The Bulgarian occupational zone included neither Thessaloniki, with its over 55,000 Jews, nor the Western-most part of Macedonia, including the towns of Debar, Struga, and Tetovo, which were part of Italian-occupied Albania. Bulgarian authorities did offer protection to Jews with no Bulgarian nationality, including those who had fled to Bulgaria from Nazi occupation elsewhere.