Bulgaria
As a result of peace treaties that ended World War I – the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Neuilly—Bulgaria, which had fought on the losing side, lost three important territories to neighboring countries: the northern plain of Dobrudja to Romania, Macedonia to Yugoslavia, and Thrace to Greece. The Bulgarians considered these treaties an insult and wanted the lands restored.

Germany also contested these peace treaties. When Adolf Hitler rose to power, he tried to win Bulgarian King Boris III’s allegiance. In the summer of 1940, after a year of Nazi-instigated war, Hitler hosted diplomatic talks between Bulgaria and Romania in Vienna. On September 7, an agreement was signed for the return of Dobrudja to Bulgaria. The Bulgarian nation rejoiced.

The Threat
However, there was a price to be paid for the return of Dobrudja. This was the adoption of the anti-Jewish “Law for the Protection of the Nation” in late December1940. Bulgarian Prime Minister Bogdan Filov and Interior Minister Peter Gabrovski, both Nazi sympathizers,were the architects of this law, which restricted Jewish rights, imposed new taxes, and established a quota for Jews in some professions. Many Bulgarians protested in letters to their government. In March 1941, Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact and joined the Axis coalition in hopes of regaining the territories of Macedonia and Thrace. As an ally of Germany, Bulgaria was not occupied and was allowed to remain sovereign. After signing the Pact, Filov was handed secret letters promising that at the end of the war, Italy and Germany would recognize Bulgaria’s aspirations in Macedonia and Thrace.

Soon after, the Wehrmacht launched two lightning offensives: one against Greece and the other against Yugoslavia. Both countries collapsed. Six weeks later, the Germans invited the Bulgarian army to occupy Macedonia and Thrace. Hitler needed all his troops for the invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on June 22, 1941. Administration of these territories was handed over to the Bulgarian authorities, and Jews suffered a murderous fate, very different from in Bulgaria proper.

In 1942, after the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, measures against the Jews worsened considerably. Jewish property was seized and anti-Jewish propaganda increased. A Commissariat for the Jewish Problem in Bulgaria was established. The anti-Jewish campaign drew the opposition of many peasants, city dwellers, intellectuals, and the Orthodox Church.

In November 1942, Adolf Beckerle, the German ambassador to Bulgaria, reported: “Partly raised with Greeks, Armenians, Turks, and Gypsies, the average Bulgarian does not understand the meaning of the struggle against the Jews, the more so as the racial question is totally foreign to him.” On April 5, 1943, the German legation in Sofia sent a confidential report to SS headquarters about the difficulty of deporting the Jews from Bulgaria. Volf Oshlis, a member of the legation, concluded: “Bulgarian people are democratic and practice religious tolerance. Bulgaria is a country without anti-Semitism and respects the achievements of other people.” In 1943, the Bulgarian government took further steps to crack down on the Jews. Interior Minister Gabrovski and Theodor Dannecker, the Third Reich’s special adviser on Jewish affairs, signed a secret agreement to deport 20,000 Jews to German territories. The pact called for sending 11,000 Jews from Thrace and Macedonia and another 8,000 from Bulgaria’s old borders. The remaining Bulgarian Jews were to be deported later.

Deportions Halted
The initial roundups were to begin on March 9, 1943. In Kyustendil, a town on the western border, the boxcars were lined up. But as the news about the imminent deportations leaked, protests began throughout Bulgaria. In the morning of March 9, a delegation from Kyustendil, comprised of eminent public figures and headed by Dimitar Peshev, the deputy speaker of the National Assembly, met with Interior Minister Gabrovski. They threatened to expose the scheme, which was certain to enrage the Bulgarian people. Finally, Gabrovski relented. The same day he sent telegrams to the roundup centers cancelling the deportations. In fact, Gabrovski’s decision was not taken on his own “personal initiative,” but had come from the highest authority— King Boris III. Peshev’s eleventh hour initiative, combined with the staunch support of the church and the intellectual elites, had shaken the king. At the risk of direct confrontation with the Reich, he refused to deport the Jews. Four hours before the deadline, the order was cancelled.

The Outcry
Knowing that the Commissariat for the Jewish Question would be furious, Peshev moved to prevent any future surprises by having 42 members of parliament sign a letter protesting the deportation plan, which was then sent to Prime Minister Filov. Similar letters came from groups of writers, lawyers, physicians, and army officers.

Orthodox Church leaders in Sofia and Plovdiv also spoke out. Bishop Stephan, the head of the Sofian church and the highest-ranking Bulgarian church official,and Bishop Kiril, head of the church in Plovdiv, vigorously opposed the anti-Jewish campaign. Bishop Stephan sent messages to the king, pleading: “Do not persecute so that you yourself will not be persecuted…. God will keep watch over your actions.” In person, he warned: “If the persecution against the Jews continues, I shall open the doors of all Bulgarian churches to them.” And in a public statement, he said that the trains to deport Jews would have to pass over his body. In northern Bulgaria, farmers threatened to lie down on the railway tracks to prevent passage of the trains. Elin Pelin, the president of the Bulgarian Writers Association, wrote: “The conscience of the Bulgarian people hangs in the balance. The stain cast on our fellow citizens by the expulsion of our Jewish neighbors will not be erased forgenerations to come.”

Nazi pressure on King Boris continued. At the end of March, Hitler invited the king to visit him. Upon returning home, King Boris ordered able-bodied Jewishmen to join hard labor units to build roads. Some claim he did so as an excuse to avoid deporting them. Bulgaria’s opposition came to a head at the last official meeting between Hitler and King Boris in August 1943. Reports of the meeting indicate that Hitler was furious at the king for refusing to join the war against the USSR and to deport the Jews. Two weeks later King Boris III died. Rumors circulated that he was poisoned on Hitler’s orders. The Red Army entered Bulgaria in September1944, ending the threat against the Jews.

Other Territories
Beginning of March, 1943, 11,343 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace, territories then under Bulgarian control, were deported to the death camps of Treblinka and Majdanek. King Boris III did not act to prevent the deportation. While Jews living in Bulgaria proper were saved, the king was complicit with the Nazis in murdering the Jews of other lands.

Whether the deportation occurred as a result of German pressure, which some argue was harder to refuse in dealing with the non-Bulgarian citizens, is debated today.

Even as we recall the rescue of Jews from within Bulgaria’s border, we remember and mourn the murder of Jews in these territories.