"Not a single person will be able to say that 40,000 Jews will leave Bulgaria for good," stated a member of the Jewish Fatherland Front, a by-blow of the ruling leftist Fatherland Front, in 1946; and he added: "We Communists do not want to help set up a Jewish state in Palestine. The Fatherland Front wants to create a life for the Jews in Bulgaria."
Real life turned out to be quite different just two years later. Bulgaria-proper emerged from the Second World War with as many Jews as it had had at its outset. In 1948-1951, 32,099 Jews left for Palestine. They had been preceded by about 7,000 who had left during or immediately after the war. In this way Bulgaria parted with over three quarters of its Jewry.
The mass emigration of Bulgarian Jews was the result of many and complex reasons.
The war-time antisemitic legislation was repealed in full shortly after the 9 September 1944 Communist coup, and the Fatherland Front, which took over, adopted various measures designed to bring about the restitution of Jewish properties confiscated by the pro-Nazi government. But the Fatherland Front was actually in no hurry to implement the measures, creating a situation that would characterise life in Bulgaria for the next 45 years: the introduction of laws whose lawmakers had no intention of enforcing. Over 70 percent of the country's Jews had little or no means of subsistence. Communist apparatchiks sometimes refused food coupons to Jews and the Jewish community was plagued by fears that there might be a return to the antisemitic policies of the past. These fears were not assuaged by the new rulers' attitude towards other Bulgarian ethnic minorities, especially the Muslims. Bulgaria was rapidly becoming a model Soviet state. Whilst the Communists had vowed to return all Jewish properties to their erstwhile owners, a law nationalising "large" town properties was adopted in 1947. Well-to-do Jews again found themselves turned out of their factories, banks and residences. In the meantime, the bid to set up the State of Israel intensified. While the Communists supported the Jewish efforts in the British Mandate, they continued to oppose all manifestations of Zionism at home. Zionist feelings turned out to be a lot stronger than anyone expected: in 1946 the United Zionist Organisation had as many as 14,000 active members. In the following years this number would rise.
Georgi Dimitrov, Bulgaria's Stalinist leader, had returned to Bulgaria from Moscow in 1946. Echoing Soviet attitudes, he told Jewish leaders that emigration to Palestine would "in principle" be allowed. The real change came after the Soviet Union consolidated its stance towards emigration to Palestine, and especially after Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet representative to the United Nations, supported the establishment of the State of Israel at the UN. On 28 July 1948, with the blessing of the government which officially endorsed Jewish emigration to Palestine "in order to join the fight against imperialism," the Consistory in Bulgaria issued a directive encouraging emigration. Those who wanted to leave were issued with aliyah certificates, and given exit visas – often the result of per capita payments provided by the American Joint Distribution Committee.
Emigration continued throughout the Communist period, even though the administrative obstacles put in its way increased.
The 1989-1990 collapse of the Communist system and the ensuing economic chaos prompted a new wave of emigration to Israel. About 5,000 Bulgarian Jews, many of whom were the offspring of mixed marriages or were themselves in such unions, took advantage of the Law of Return. At the same time, some Israelis of Bulgarian origin, who had left in 1949-1951, had their Bulgarian citizenship restored, and began spending an increasing amount of time in Bulgaria.
El Al Shot Down Over Bulgaria
Well known for its excellent security, the Israeli national airline, El Al, has had only one incident in its history when one of its aircraft was shot down. This happened over Bulgaria at the height of the Cold War.
In the early morning of 27 July 1955 El Al Flight 402, a Lockheed L-409 Constellation, took off from London bound for Tel Aviv. It carried 58 people onboard. It was supposed to flfly over Yugoslavia and Greece, because Communist Bulgaria did not allow non-Warsaw Pact aircraft in its skies.
West of the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border, however, the aircraft changed course and entered Bulgarian airspace near Tran. Two Soviet-manufactured MiG-15s were immediately sent from Sofia to tail the El Al aircraft through western Bulgaria.
The MiG pilots would later contend that the Israeli aircraft was not clearly marked as a passenger plane and that they had used all means of warning it, including fifiring tracer bullets. But the Israeli plane continued on southwards towards Greece. Shortly before it was due to leave Bulgarian territory, radio orders to shoot it down were transmitted.
Flight 402 ended in a fifireball near the Bulgarian town of Petrich. All onboard died. The Bulgarian Communist government did not concede what had happened until a day later. It did appoint a commission of investigation, which concluded that the Israeli aircraft had violated Bulgarian airspace, but also that the Bulgarian response was disproportionate. Bulgaria refused to allow a six-member Israeli team of investigators to look into the case. It did not permit even its own prosecutors to interrogate the pilots. Three Israeli experts would later be admitted near the site of the crash, but almost all the debris had already been cleared away. The Israelis concluded that the plane had deviated from its course owing to high winds.
In 1957 Israel sued Bulgaria at the International Court in The Hague. The court ordered Israel and Bulgaria to settle the dispute themselves. Bulgaria paid out $500,000 to the families of the dead passengers, a fraction of the $6,850,000 originally demanded.
The reasons for the shooting-down continue to be unclear. Some suggest that the El Al pilots made a navigational error through fatigue, others surmise that the aircraft was downed because it was carrying a contraband shipment of silver. Yet others claim the plane was shot down because a Mossad agent being sought by the Soviets had boarded the plane in Vienna, and Bulgaria merely acted on Soviet orders.
The location of the crash in the area of Rupite, near the border with Greece, remained unmarked up to 2019 when the Israeli Embassy unveiled a small monument to commemorate the victims. The idea for the monument had been put forward by a students' club called Anne Frank in Petrich.
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