Bulgaria and the holocaust - a strange case ?

[Mostowka]

Below is an article from ushmm that describes Bulgarias relation to the holocaust, they apparently deported Jews from occupuied territories (Greece, Macedonia, Serbia) but not from their home territories, only expulsion of Jews from the capital - Sofia. How come ? No explanation is given in the article and it would be interesting to hear one... Another interesting fact is that Bulgaria did not declare war on the Soviet Union, even if they were part of the axis.

PERSECUTION OF JEWS IN BULGARIA

Beginning in July 1940, Bulgaria instituted anti-Jewish legislation. Jews were excluded from public service, discriminated against in their choice of places of residence, and restricted economically. Marriage between Jews and non-Jews was prohibited.

During the war, German-allied Bulgaria did not deport Bulgarian Jews. Bulgaria did, however, deport non-Bulgarian Jews from the territories it had annexed from Yugoslavia and Greece. In March 1943, Bulgarian authorities arrested all the Jews in Macedonia and Thrace. In Macedonia, formerly part of Yugoslavia, Bulgarian officials interned 7,000 Jews in a transit camp in Skopje. In Thrace, formerly a Bulgarian-occupied province of Greece, about 4,000 Jews were deported to Bulgarian assembly points at Gorna Dzhumaya and Dupnitsa and handed over to the Germans. In all, Bulgaria deported over 11,000 Jews to German-held territory. By the end of March 1943, most of them had been deported to the Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Jews of Bulgarian citizenship were relatively secure from deportation to German-held territory. However, all Bulgarian Jewish men between the ages of 20 and 40 were drafted for forced labor after 1941, and in May 1943 the Bulgarian government announced the expulsion of 20,000 Jews from the capital, Sofia, to the provinces. (The 1934 Jewish population of Sofia was about 26,000; in that year Jews formed 9 percent of the capital's total population.) Protests staged by both Bulgarian Jews and non-Jews were brutally suppressed by the police. Within about two weeks, almost 20,000 Jews had been forcibly expelled.

Also in the spring of 1943, the Bulgarian government made extensive plans to comply with the Nazi demand to deport Bulgaria's Jews. Significant and public protest from key political and clerical leaders moved King Boris to cancel these deportation plans.

Although Bulgaria was allied with Nazi Germany, for most of the war the Soviet Union maintained diplomatic relations with the Balkan nation. As Soviet forces approached in late summer 1944, however, the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria. In October 1944, Bulgaria switched allegiances and declared war on Germany. Bulgaria retained the Dobruja region, which it had acquired from Romania in 1940. After the war, Yugoslavia and Greece took back the territories annexed by Bulgaria in 1941.

In 1945, the Jewish population of Bulgaria was still about 50,000, its prewar level. Next to the rescue of Danish Jews, Bulgarian Jewry's escape from deportation and extermination represents the most significant exception of any Jewish population in Nazi-occupied Europe. Beginning in 1948, however, more than 35,000 Bulgarian Jews chose to emigrate to the new state of Israel.

Source: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?la ... d=10005355

[Vadim]

Prof. Bar-Zohar and Dr. Ben-Yaakov presented the conclusion that this great humanitarian act was the result of a combined effort. It was the Bulgarian people, including leading intellectuals, parliamentarians, civil servaints and politicians, the Orthodox Church and the King, who were the actual saviours of the Bulgarian Jews. It was stressed that on several occasions King Boris III skillfully resisted the German pressurs and demands. Thus at the end of the day, not a single person from the territory of Bulgaria proper was deported to the death camps. Unfortunately, the Jews from German occupied Macedonia and Southern Thrace could not be saved - the German army and Gestapo did not recognize any Bulgarian jurisdiction over them and they were deported swiftly to the death camps.

http://www.b-info.com/places/Bulgaria/J ... eb95.shtml

And some more interesting reading on the subject
http://www.b-info.com/places/Bulgaria/J ... ul12.shtml

[Mostowka]

Thanks for the links Vadim !