The fact is that about 48,000 Jews in Bulgaria proper were spared the Nazi gas chambers and over 11,000 Jews from the Bulgaria-administered territories in Vardar Macedonia, Aegean Thrace and southern Serbia were not. How and why this happened is still a contentious issue used by various Bulgarian politicians left, right and centre to attain various domestic and international goals.
Up until the beginning of 1943 the Bulgarian government prepared itself for the implementation of the Wannsee Conference guidelines to exterminate Europe's Jews. On 9 July 1942 the Bulgarian Parliament adopted legislation to enable the government to make crucial decisions without parliamentary endorsement. Most historians agree that one of the purposes of this act was to pave the way for the deportation of all of Bulgaria's Jews to Auschwitz and Treblinka. On 4 March 1943 the government started rounding up 7,122 Jews from Macedonia, 4,221 from Thrace and 185 from the area of Pirot, now in Serbia. These people were herded into Bulgarian State Railways cattle cars and shipped to Poland, either through Yugoslavian territory or through the Bulgarian port of Lom on the Danube. In keeping with a secret agreement with Theodor Dannecker, on 9 March 1943 Jewish families listed as "undesirable" were rounded up in Kyustendil, Dupnitsa, Gorna Dzhumaya (now Blagoevgrad), Plovdiv and Pazardzhik.
Miraculously, the trains prepared for them never departed.
A few days prior to 9 March 1943, Lilyana Panitsa, the personal assistant to Aleksandar Belev, reportedly told her private doctor about the planned deportations. The news spread quickly and reached four prominent citizens from Kyustendil, one of the towns whose Jews had been on the departure lists. The four consulted with Dimitar Peshev, himself from Kyustendil and deputy speaker of the National Assembly. They decided that the deportations ought to be stopped and collectively put pressure on Interior Minister Petar Gabrovski. The trains were halted.
But in those days official orders did not travel as fast as they do today. Some provincial authorities remained unaware of the change of plans. One example was Plovdiv. On the night of 10 March 1943 Jews were already being assembled in the Jewish school. Enraged, Kiril, the Orthodox bishop of Plovdiv, stormed into the school and threatened the police that if they went ahead with the deportation he would open up his churches for Jewish refugees and would hide Jews in his own home.
The planned deportations were halted, but Dimitar Peshev had no illusions that the decision was irreversible. On 17 March 1943 he sent a declaration to Prime Minister Bogdan Filov protesting against his anti-Jewish policies. The declaration was signed by 43 MPs from the ruling majority.
Dimitar Peshev was sacked from his parliamentary position on 26 March 1943.
Two months later the government made a new attempt to deport the Bulgarian Jews to Nazi-occupied Poland. Aleksandar Belev had two plans. According to Plan A, all 48,000 Jews were to be shipped in one go. Plan B was more "delicate." It envisaged initially deporting 23,000 Sofia Jews to the provinces, and then rounding up everyone and shipping them to Nazi-occupied Poland. King Boris favoured Plan B. Aleksandar Belev commissioned six ships at Lom and Somovit to carry the human cargo.
Word of the plan leaked out, and the Jews in Sofia organised mass protests culminating on 24 May 1943, the Day of Saints Cyril and Methodius – a major public holiday in Bulgaria. The Sofia Jews joined the thousands of Bulgarian students and citizens taking part in the official celebrations. The rally was so huge that the police intervened and arrested a few hundred participants, including all Sofia's rabbis as well as members of the Consistory and the Central Israelite Council. Concurrently, the Orthodox Church also intervened. Sofia's Bishop Stefan put pressure on the king to stop the planned expulsions and even instructed his priests to help any Jew who sought shelter.
The Jews of Sofia were indeed deported to the provinces, but in June 1943 the six ships waiting on the Danube to take them upriver left empty.
In the summer of 1943 it became increasingly clear that Germany was losing the war. The main anti-Nazi opposition in Bulgaria, which was dominated by Communists, stepped up its activities. The Germans would make another attempt to force Bulgaria to deport its Jews, but this failed as well. Prime Minister Bogdan Filov himself would tell Adolph Beckerle, the German minister plenipotentiary in Sofia, that deporting the Jews was not on the agenda because of the internal as well as the external trouble it would create. At the end of August 1943 King Boris III visited Hitler at his Alpine residence in Berchtesgaden, where he again refused to send Bulgarian troops to the Eastern Front.
A few days after his return the king died in what many still see as unclear circumstances.
The country was tossed into a government crisis. Because the heir to the throne, Simeon, was a minor, a Council of Regents was formed to rule the country. All anti-Jewish measures were suspended in practice.
In the summer of 1944 almost everyone in Bulgaria realised that the pact with Nazi Germany had been a terrible mistake. The government made a number of attempts to distance itself from Berlin and join the Allies. On 3 September 1944 some anti-Jewish laws were officially annulled.
On 8 September 1944 the Red Army invaded even though two weeks previously Bulgaria had declared neutrality. On 9 September, a Communist-led coup toppled the government in Sofia and installed a leftwing Fatherland Front coalition. One of its first decisions was to repeal the Defence of the Nation Act.
Mainly owing to the massive Communist propaganda during the Cold War, and the lack of proper records, some aspects of the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews remain unexplained. The fact is that only two powers intervened directly, with real action: the Peshev-led MPs and the Orthodox Church.
Yet theories about who did what and when still proliferate and tend to change depending on the political inclinations of whoever does the talking.
Under Communism, the mainstream theory was that the Communist Party and the clandestine Communist media played the decisive role. The Communist ideologues argued that their active support for the Jews prepared the general public for the protests against the Jews' disenfranchisement and planned deportation.
After the collapse of Communism in 1989, King Boris III and his wife, Queen Giovanna, were extolled as "saviours." The king, reportedly, had agreed to the Defence of the Nation Act to appease Germany, but then dawdled in order to save the Jews.
Yet another "saviour" was Peter Deunov, according to a more esoteric hypothesis.
A Christian mystic and founder of a sect,
Deunov allegedly held sway over the superstitious king. When he learned of the planned deportations in 1943, Deunov is said to have told the king that if a single Jew left, the royal dynasty would be rendered heirless. The king was scared, and stopped the deportations.
Another theory proposes a more practical reason for the salvation of the Jews. According to it, the king did intend to deport them, but only the "undesirable" Bolshevik element. The other Jews would be kept in Bulgaria as "essential labour" to work on roads and infrastructure: 20,000-30,000 Bulgarian workers were already employed in Germany, leading to a shortage of manpower.
One refreshing point of view is offered by Tzvetan Todorov, the French philosopher of Bulgarian origin. According to him, Bulgaria was not very different from the other European countries that did not save their Jews. What did save the Jews in Bulgaria was a fragile chain of events that could have been broken at any time: one blunder by a politician here or there, one public figure that did not stand up at the right time, a different sentiment in the Orthodox church leadership, a less crafty king – and the whole "salvation" would have turned into deportation.
At the present time, most Bulgarian politicians and statesmen try to avoid the controversies by claiming that the Bulgarian Jews were saved as a result of the efforts of the "whole nation."
No one is willing to accept responsibility for the deaths of the 11,343 Jews from Macedonia, Aegean Thrace and Pirot who were sent to Poland on the day the Bulgarian Jews were saved.
English
Български