It is a well-known fact that the Bulgarian people saved the Jews who lived in Bulgaria from Nazi extermination during the Second World War. The problem is that the name of the Bulgarian people is often misused. The deeds of the “good” as well as the “bad” Bulgarians are part of our national history.
The case is even more complicated when it comes to the relations between the Bulgarian state and the Jews in the years of the Second World War.
The rescue of the Bulgarian Jewry is certainly something to be proud of. Few are those, however, who know, or, if they do, it is insufficient, that the Bulgarian state institutions: the Government, the Monarchical institution, the National assembly, the police and the army assisted Nazi Germany in the extermination of 11,363 Jews from the so-called “newly liberated lands”: Aegean Thrace, Vardar Macedonia and the Western outlying regions.
In the early mornings of the 4th until the 11th March 1943 the Bulgarian administrative, police and military authorities, which had settled as liberators in these regions of the Balkans, herded up a number of men, women, children, babies, expectant mothers, old and decrepit people. They were lied to that they would be taken to Bulgaria but in fact they were thrust into preliminary concentration camps prepared in advance. Even before the Jews were transported out of the country, the participants in this act fall on their property like vultures and loot it. The sufferings of the wretched people in the Bulgarian preliminary concentration camps are described by a witness:
“The condition of the Shtip and Bitola Jews was worse, especially of the latter. Meagre bedding, more children – almost every family had one, two or more children. /…/ The young mother had given birth here, in the building [the concentration camp infirmary]. She had a girl – healthy. She [the young mother] was begging for some underlinen. Amongst the ill there were: consumptive, serious cases, suffering from angina pectoris, pneumonia – one case, four cases of senility, a hundred-year-old woman, three or four paralysed people, etc. Amongst them there were three men who had fought in the wars, wearing their commemorative medals on their breasts. /…/”
The Jews were deported to the Treblinka concentration camp by train via Yugoslavia and by barges along the Danube. They were escorted mainly by Bulgarian policemen and only a few German soldiers. Though it is an unpalatable fact that some of the Nazi “death routes” started from Bulgaria, it is historically true. Not only did they lead the Jews to their doom, but some of them found their death on the way.
The modern thesis that it is only Hitler’s Germany that was responsible for the extermination of 11,363 Jews and the participation of Bulgaria was forcibly involved cannot be proved historically and is untrue.
It is an insolent and brazen-faced lie that the Nazi were responsible for the deportation because the Bulgarian jurisdiction on the areas was not officially recognized by the Germans, a claim shared by some historians, journalists and writers. All available archival documents show that the Bulgarian state exercised full economic, administrative, military and political control in the so-called new territories. The deportation of the Jews from Aegean Thrace, Macedonia and the Western outlying regions was conducted by the Bulgarian administrative authorities: the police, the army, the tax officers and bank clerks, even teachers and the Bulgarian Red Cross structures were involved. It was carried out after the explicit consent of the Bulgarian king stated before Hitler and Ribbentrop. Why would they need The King’s consent if the Nazi could order the Jews around freely in the so-called “newly liberated lands”?
The sin of the Bulgarian state is even greater because, with the proverbial Bulgarian political servility, our rulers were outdone only by the satellite countries of Slovenia and Croatia. In their reports, the Nazi acknowledged the diligence of our authorities. In a secret dispatch of 5 April 1943 by the German legation in Sofia to the Reich Security Central Office concerning the progress of the deportation of the Jews from Bulgaria, it was written:
“Bearing in mind that in Italy, Hungary, Spain, etc The Jewish question has not been put for discussion and no preparation for the deportation of the Jews has begun yet, it could be said that in spite of the limitations common for the Balkans, the Bulgarian government is actively dealing with the resolution of the Jewish question.”
It is a matter of principle whether it is historically and morally justifiable for politicians and historians in the past and at present to divide the Jews into Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian and take national pride in the ones saved while guiltily pass over in silence those who were exterminated.
How can we then explain why the Bulgarian government signed a note which actually allowed the German authorities to exterminate the Jews with Bulgarian citizenship in Germany and in the territories occupied by it in as early as the middle of 1942? How many Bulgarian Jews who lived at the time in the territories conquered by the Germans were murdered as a result of the application of this note? The answer to this question will deprive us of the right to claim that Bulgaria is the only country in Europe which did not hand over the Bulgarian Jews for extermination.
Why was it necessary for the Council of Ministers of the Bulgarian Kingdom to pass Regulation 116 on 2 March 1943 with which the following resolution was approved:
“All persons of Jewish origin who are deported out of the country are deprived of Bulgarian citizenship if they had had such until then.”
Apparently the measures did not apply to the Aegean and Macedonian Jews because they had been deprived of the right to adopt Bulgarian citizenship earlier, despite the fact that such right was given to the Greeks in Aegean Thrace.
The only persons of Jewish origin in Bulgaria at that time were the Bulgarian Jews. With this regulation the Bulgarian state deprived them of their citizenship in order to justify and conceal the partiality of the rulers to their deportation. Likewise today some historians, public figures and politicians claim that the Aegean and Macedonian Jews were exterminated because they were not Bulgarian subjects and therefore were under the jurisdiction of Nazi Germany.
The officers in the Commissariat of Jewish Issues understood the government acts in quite a different way. Yaroslav Kalitzin, one of the slaughterers of the non-Bulgarian Jews, states before the People’s Court:
“The deportation campaign in 1943 was the preparatory stage of the final deportation of the Jews from Bulgaria.”
In a secret telegram of 4 April 1943 the German Foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop wrote:
“Concerning the Jewish issue in Bulgaria, the King said that so far he had given his consent only about the transportation of the Jews from Macedonia and Thrace to Eastern Europe. With regards to the Jews in Bulgaria, he wants to dispose of only an insignificant number of Bolshevik Communist elements and keep the rest 25,000 Jews in concentration camps in order to use them in road construction.”
This document is constantly used as the most serious evidence that King Boris III did not want the deportation and saved the Bulgarian Jews, but it is also the most serious evidence that the extermination of the Aegean and Macedonian Jews was conducted with the explicit consent of the King. What assessment should then present-day Bulgarian society give Boris III: was he a saviour or exterminator of Jews?
So, are we going to, like King Boris III and his ministers, divide the Jews into Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian, into Bolshevik Communist and so on? What did the non-Bulgarian Jews do to deserve to be sent to death by the Bulgarian state? The Nazi proved more perceptive than us and in April 1943 noted:
“With the deportation of the Jews, the Bulgarian government pursues only its material interests finding expression in the purpose to give the property of the deported Jews to reliable Bulgarians, with which they will be appeased and at the same time the troublemaking Jews in the newly acquired Bulgarian territories will be replaced by Bulgarians. There is no doubt that the Bulgarian government is prepared to deport the Jews who live in old Bulgaria.”
The Nazi understood the readiness of the Bulgarian government authorities as motivated by the desire to plunder the rich Jews’ property and achieve social and ethnic peace. The tragic thing was that the representatives of the government authorities were really driven by these objectives. At a People’s Court session, Kalitzin, who developed and put into practice the plan for the deportation of the Jews from Aegean Thrace, answered to the question “Did you yourself think that it was in the interest of the Bulgarian state then?” as follows:
“Yes? I did? because this reduced the number of the minorities. If I had been ordered to deport Turks, Albanians, I would have acted in the same way, Mr Chairman, because I was a pan-Bulgarian.”
It might be terrible to talk about this, but we must confess another disgraceful episode of the tragedy with the deported Jews. The Bulgarian authorities, quite literally, haggled how much to pay the Nazi for their expenses for the extermination of the Jews. In a memorandum of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs it was written:
“The issue of the reimbursement of the German aid remained open. Initially we had in mind the sum of 250 Reichsmark per Jew, which the Bulgarians considered too high.”
Our heard-headed clerks probably took into consideration the fact that the Croatians had paid the Nazi 20 Reichsmark per head for the same service. The Germans tried not to strike a bad bargain and in as early as the beginning of December 1942 instructed their agent in Bulgaria:
“As far as the disputed by the Bulgarian side reimbursement of the corresponding costs is concerned, it should be noted that, both with relation to the amount of the transportation, supplies, camp provision, etc expenses and with relation to the expected profit for the Bulgarian government after the confiscation of the deported Jews’ property, the above reimbursement amount is real. /…/ As a lower limit of these expenses, the amount of 100 Reichsmark per person should be born in mind.”
Pay attention to this: the Nazi wanted to take part in the division of the profits expected by the Bulgarian government. The political aspect of the Jew bargain is beyond doubt: the Bulgarian state assisted Hitler’s Germany in the implementation of the plan for the extermination of the Jewish people.
The Jews from Macedonia, Aegean Thrace and the Western outlying regions were exterminated in the Treblinka death camp in Poland.
A witness tells:
“I know that two transports arrived from Bulgaria. These people looked quite unlike those who arrived from the camp in Poland. They were well-fed, fleshy, big. As we faced the walking corpses of the Polish Jews, we asked ourselves where these people came from. Then I heard they had come from Bulgaria. /…/ After these people were poisoned with gas and burned, cigarettes, biscuits and tobacco were smuggled from Camp one to Camp two. On the cigarettes and on the biscuit packages too, there were inscriptions with letters which looked similar to Russian. I could not read the letters, but some other people who were with me were able to read them and said they were Bulgarian.”
Another witness states:
“When clothes were being handed out, I also saw papers and passports; they were written in Bulgarian. /…/ I know that all the Jews from these transports were sent to the gas chambers. I can’t remember anyone of them staying alive.”
A third witness describes their death:
“After the gas chambers were closed and locked, the people started to cry and shout. /…/ I heard them crying in a language which I could not understand, but I noticed that it was a Slavonic language. /…/ I remember about those two transports so clearly because I had to carry the corpses from the gas chambers and the incineration facilities and had to burn them immediately, whereas until then the corpses from the gas chambers were dumped into mass graves and only after some time were they dragged out from the graves with excavators and burned.”
These are the recollections of former prisoners in the Treblinka concentration camp.
The extermination, which turned into a bargain, is a fact that can hardly be accepted by a normal person’s mind. Part of the profits from the personal property of the wretches who were slaughtered in Hitler’s death camps was used to pay the Germans their expenses for the extermination of the Jews.
The Bulgarian state sold 11,363 Jews to Germany. Whatever norms we use to judge this act, whether those of the Nuremberg trial or those of humanity, it will forever remain in history as a war crime. The historical responsibility for its commitment belongs to the Bulgarian state institutions: the Monarchial institution, the People’s Assembly, the government and the people who represented them at that time.
Anybody who reads our new history carefully will be surprised how many saviours of the Jews there are in it. The names of the butchers who are responsible for the extermination of the Aegean and Macedonian Jews are, however, nowhere to be found.
Was there a possibility that the Bulgarian state could save the Jews collected for extermination? The international community, represented by the USA and Great Britain, made offers to the Bulgarian government through the Swiss embassy in Sofia from 11 until 27 March to allow the emigration of the Aegean and Macedonian Jews to other countries which were ready to accept them. On 11 March Filov answered the Swiss ambassador that it was already too late “because they are leaving in a couple of days.” Actually the Bulgarian governors did not want to save the Jews, although they had the legal and administrative power to do it. Up to the time of the passing of these Jews under the jurisdiction of the Nazi authorities, the Bulgarian state could have refused their deportation and saved them. The Greek Jews, loaded on ships at Lom, were under the control of Bulgarian police officers up to Vienna, where they handed them over to the Nazi.
The big question is whether the Bulgarian politicians will continue “not to know” what the role of the Bulgarian state was in those tragic events. This line of attitude was started by Bogdan Filov’s government. At a closed-door meeting of the parliamentary majority Minister Petar Gabrovski explained that “the government could not resist the pressure to declare a war on Russia, succumbed to German pressure to eliminate the Jewish communities.” It is surprising that later Panel Seven of the People’s Court promoted the same thesis. It stated in its verdict that “the deportation act was German rather than Bulgarian act.”
Filov’s government boldly lied to the Americans too. The Bulgarian minister plenipotentiary in Switzerland, Kyoseivanov, explained to the American representatives that “the actions of the Commissar on Jewish issues had been undertaken on his own initiative.” This lie has been circulated up to the present day. Alexander Belev signed the agreement with Germany after he was ordered by minister Gabrovski, who on his turn had negotiated the terms with Bekerle, the German minister plenipotentiary in Bulgaria.
It is time we gave up our efforts to “launder” our national historical self-consciousness with relation to our political inclinations. Nobody is greater than history, and in that of Bulgaria glory and shame, exaltation and anguish will inevitably coexist. It is an indisputable fact that in 1943, while some Bulgarians were saving the Jews, others were assisting Hitler’s Germany in the extermination of the Jews.
For this reason, when Bulgarian politicians visit places connected with the tragic fate of the Jews in the Second World War, it is more becoming for them, instead of boasting, to lower their heads and ask forgiveness for those Jews who our country sold for extermination.
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