Bulgaria – Bulgaria accepts responsibility for the genocide of more than 11,000
Jews in its jurisdiction during World War II, President Georgi Parvanov said during a visit to Israel this week.
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The 11,000 Jewish victims were residents of Thrace in Greece and Macedonia in Yugoslavia, areas annexed to Bulgaria in April 1941. Nazi Germany awarded these regions to the Balkan kingdom in gratitude for its cooperation.
Bulgarian police acting under Nazi orders arrested the Jews in the annexed territories and deported them to Treblinka in 1943. In parallel, Bulgarian church and political leaders saved the 48,000 Jews living in Bulgaria proper, whom the Nazis had also demanded be deported to death camps.
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,” he said at a ceremony at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem. [haaretz]
The Bulgarians saved “their” Jews, but had a very different attitude to the Jews in the territories they conquered. The Danes were much the same, by the way.
Anonymous 11:28am: Bulgaria is mostly Christian Orthodox, not Muslim. The Muslims are mostly of Turkish ethnicity. Neither has much of a history of anti-Semitism, and it appears that indeed the citizenry of Bulgaria along with the intellectuals at the universities, the bishops of the Orthodox Christian Church, and the King all opposed the deportations in spite of the anti-Semitic collaborationist government. Michael Bar-Zohar wrote a great book on the miracle of the nearly 50,000 Jews of Bulgaria surviving.
These Bulgarians are to be commended. At least these people, who are not Jews, regret their role in what they did do, and saved many of the Jews in their lands.
Zionism, on the other hand, doesn’t even admit to its roles (plural) in the murder of hundreds of thousands of their “fellow” Jews, much less apologize for it.
Yet these Bulgarians are apologizing to, of all people, Zionists?!!
What an Olam Hafuch. May Hashem redeem us all speedily in our time.
And then there were the Bulgarian Muslims who saved 50,000 Jews during the Shoah, hiding them in Mosques, forging papers stating that they were Muslims and arranging for passage to Turkey.
My mother in laws extended family was saved by Muslims in Bulgaria.
Sadly, although they had tried, Bulgarian Muslims were unable to save the 11,000 Jews deported from Greece and Macedonia during the war.
But Bulgaria’s Muslims, did manage to convince the Christian government not to turn over Bulgaria’s 50,000 Jews to the Nazis.
I know a Bulgarian Muslim family here who are from the same town as our family.They told us that all of the Muslim families in that town risked their lives to save Jews; that there was nothing “exceptional” about them.
Nonetheless, our family continues to honor them for their heroism with gifts whenever we can.
Wow! Thanks, Bulgaria! Makes us all feel better. (But, come on, just between us, you’d do it again if you had the chance.) ldet