On 9 September 1940, Jews in the Central Sofia Synagogue applauded what at the time seemed the best news of the year. Two days previously, Romania had returned to the Kingdom of Bulgaria southern Dobrudzha, the territory it had conquered in the Second Balkan War of 1913.
However, just a month later the Bulgarian Jews started to get cold feet. The National Assembly in Sofia began debating a draft law, the Defence of the Nation Act. Reportedly, King Boris III told an advisor at the time: "I postponed and I didn't want us to do it, but now they have a similar law in Romania, Hungary and even France, I thought we'd better do it instead of waiting to have it imposed on us."
To understand both the reasons for the most virulently antisemitic piece of legislation in Bulgaria's history and its implications, one needs a bit of background. In 1940, Bulgaria was still undecided which side to back in the raging Second World War. The memories of the territories and populations it had lost in the three catastrophic wars at the beginning of the 20th century – the two Balkan wars and the Great War – were still fresh and painful. King Boris III, who had imposed his own authoritarian regime in 1935, procrastinated in an attempt to play for time.
However, the countries already involved in the war needed Bulgaria as it straddled the roads to Greece and Turkey and could provide a strategic passage through the Balkans to anyone who persuaded it to join their side.
Popular sentiment inside Bulgaria was at best contentious. Some segments of the opposition insisted on neutrality while others backed an alliance with Britain. The links with Germany, however, proved too strong. During the interwar period Bulgaria's economy had entangled itself in an intricate relationship with Germany, its former First World War ally. Revanchist feelings were high in both Bulgaria and Germany. King Boris feared any deviation from Germany would bring on Bolshevism (even though at that time Nazi Germany and the USSR were allies). The government was also pro-German. Bogdan Filov, a politically unaffiliated archaeologist who had been appointed prime minister in February 1940, was German-educated and subscribed to a number of German academic societies.
Germany succeeded in convincing Bulgaria that if it joined the Axis, it would be rewarded with most of the territories lost in the 1912-1918 wars, which now belonged to Romania, Yugoslavia and Greece. The return of southern Dobrudzha in 1940 finally did the trick. To put it figuratively, it was the carrot that persuaded Bulgaria's politicians to back the Reich.
On 1 March 1941 Bulgaria joined the Axis. The Germans were quick to respond. Bulgarian troops marched unopposed into Yugoslavia and northern Greece on 19-20 April. Bulgaria was granted the right to administer the territories it considered its own: Vardar Macedonia and Aegean Thrace. The changing of the borders was celebrated as a national triumph, and King Boris III was lauded as the "unifying king."
However, Bulgaria's politicians would soon discover that the carrot had a stick attached to it, and that friendship with Nazi Germany would bear a heavy price. The national economy became almost totally dependent on that of Germany and, significantly, Bulgaria would also have to handle the "Jewish Question."
In reality, "solving" that question had already begun in the months preceding Bulgaria's joining the Axis. The Defence of the Nation Act was adopted on 24 December 1940 and came into force on 24 January 1941. It took away almost all civil rights from about 48,000 Jews living in Bulgaria proper.
Closely modelled on the infamous Nuremberg laws, the Bulgarian Defence of the Nation Act banned Jews from being able to vote and stand for office. Jews were forced to list their real estate and sell to the state, at "special" prices, any agricultural land they owned. Jewish property was levied with a special, one-off tax amounting to up to 25 percent of its value. Jews were banned from owning private companies in some sectors, for example publishing and the media, while Jews with "free" professions were given local quotas.
The Defence of the Nation Act also barred Jews from joining the armed forces. Instead, Jewish men were rounded up, mobilised into "labour groups" and made to work on state projects at a pittance.
Things took a turn for the worse in 1942. On 29 August the government set up the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs under the Interior Ministry. It was headed by an outspoken antisemite, Aleksandar Belev, and its mandate was to enforce new restrictions against the Jews. These included, but were not limited to, Jews having to wear yellow Star of David badges. Jewish homes were signposted. Jewish products were marked as such. Some of the provisions of the new decree were designed merely to add insult to injury. Jews were banned from adding "-ov" or "-ev" (the standard Bulgarian family name-forming suffix) to their last names, and they were not allowed to take on any family name except those on a list approved by the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs.
The 29 August 1942 decree ordered Jews to terminate, within three days, any kind of economic activity they conducted. Factories were told to fire Jewish workers first. The Jewish communities in the "old" Bulgarian lands were instructed to prepare for the deportation of all Jews within their jurisdiction. The property of any deported Jew would be nationalised. The same applied to other possessions as well: from radios to bicycles. The decree announced that the Jews in the "new" lands, Vardar Macedonia and Aegean Thrace, were not considered Bulgarian citizens. They were ordered to cease all economic activity and liquidate their assets.
In May 1943 all the Jews in Sofia, approximately 23,000 people, were interned in the provinces. "Offenders" of the anti-Jewish legislation were sent to labour camps. The most infamous ones were in Pleven in northern Bulgaria and near the village of Somovit, on the River Danube. Forced Jewish labour was used mainly in road construction.
Significantly, the adoption of the Defence of the Nation Act did not run smoothly. The Consistory sent in an official protest before MPs were due to vote on the bill. Letters of protests were also submitted by the Union of Lawyers, the Union of Physicians and the Union of Artists, as well as by a group of Bulgarian writers including some of the best known authors in the country. The Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church also protested against the anti-Jewish restrictions.
On the other hand, a number of pro-Nazi organisations such as the National Legions and the Otets Paisiy Alliance also protested, saying the antisemitic legislation was not tough enough. In February 1943 Aleksandar Belev and SS Hauptschturmführer Theodor Dannecker, an associate of Adolf Eichmann, signed an agreement for the deportation of 20,000 Jews from the "new Bulgarian territories" to Poland. As there were just 11,000 Jews in Thrace and Macedonia, the remaining 9,000 were to be taken from the "old lands."
The Commissariat for Jewish Affairs was preparing itself for the Final Solution.
Emigration to British Palestine
During the Second World War Bulgaria was one of the gateways through which Jews fleeing persecution in Europe departed for Palestine.
Turkey's neutrality ensured safe passage through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, but the voyage through the Black and the Mediterranean seas was risky. Sudden storms were not uncommon and there was always the danger of Soviet or German submarines. In addition, the British impounded all vessels entering Haifa without a permit.
The first war-time Jews left Bulgaria as early as 1939. Agios Nicolaos, a Greek vessel, made several trips, sailing from the ports of Varna and Burgas.
The Bulgarian ship Rudnichar took payment for several journeys she made, but stopped operating at the behest of the British ambassador in Sofia. Baruch Konfino, the organiser of these trips, hired an old, decommissioned coal ship, the Khan Krum. She was converted into a passenger vessel and renamed Salvador. The Salvador sailed out of Varna on 3 December 1940, under an Uruguayan flag. She was full of emigrants: over 350 people, including children. There were Bulgarian Jews, Jews from other countries who had been living in Bulgaria and Jews bearing non-Bulgarian passports. On 12 December the Salvador capsized in the Sea of Marmara. About 120 passengers survived. The incident was widely reported in the sympathetic Bulgarian media.
A few months later the worst sea disaster in Bulgarian maritime history occurred. The Struma, sailing under a Panamanian flag, departed from the Romanian port of Constant ̧a with 760 Jews onboard. On 24 February 1942, while still in the Black Sea, the ship was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine. All the passengers, as well as the all-Bulgarian crew, perished.
During the course of the war there were many attempts to put a stop to the emigration to Palestine from Bulgaria. On 26 March 1943, shortly after the first thwarted attempt to deport the Bulgarian Jews, the German Embassy in Sofia received orders from Berlin to immediately halt Jewish emigration through Bulgaria. The army and the heads of the Interior Ministry obeyed and demanded that each transit visa be coordinated with them, but Foreign Ministry officials looked the other way. They continued to issue visas for Jews and at least 400 Jews from Romania, Italy, France and elsewhere left Europe in this way.
When he visited Bulgaria at the end of 1944, David Ben Gurion quoted the statistics: 65,000 Jews, of whom 1,300 were Bulgarian, had come to Palestine from Europe in 1939-1944.
There is no precise data, but it is believed that in 1942-1943 about 2,000 Jewish children made it to Palestine from Bulgaria. Many of them were given shelter in a centre near Stara Zagora, run by women's and Zionist organisations.
The Struma disaster is rarely if ever mentioned in official Bulgarian textbooks. The Soviet submariners who perpetrated it, however, along with other Soviet sailors who died in the Black Sea fighting an undeclared war against Bulgaria, are still hailed as "war heroes." As recently as 2010 the seaside town of Sozopol saw the inauguration of yet another monument dedicated to them.
Justice for All?
When the Communists took over on 9 September 1944 they organised mass show trials, called a People's Court, of real and imaginary war criminals. Though endorsed by the Allies and similar to trials of collaborators in France, Norway, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere, the Bulgarian People's Court was heavily influenced by Stalin and his local stooges, who in some cases ordered the judges what to do. The People's Court's sentences resulted in executions whose number by far surpassed the death sentences handed down at the Nuremberg Trials. The war-time regents were shot. Aleksandar Belev tried to flee the country, but was caught near Sofia and was either shot or committed suicide. Petar Gabrovski was sentenced to death and executed. Dimitar Peshev was also arrested and tried. Caught in the post-war hysteria, prominent Jewish lawyers refused to defend him in court. The People's Court sentenced him to 15 years in jail on charges of "fascism and antisemitism."
Peshev was released after 13 months and died in poverty in 1973. In 1997 he was declared an honorary citizen of Israel and his name is in the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem. Bishops Kiril and Stefan were also declared Righteous Among the Nations, joining a group of a total of 20 Bulgarians to be awarded the recognition.
Lilyana Panitsa was also tried by the People's Court, but was acquitted. She died at the age of 30, probably as the result of torture by the People's Militia.
King Simeon II and his family were exiled to Spain.
Simeon Saxe Coburg Gotha returned to Bulgaria in the 1990s as a private citizen and became prime minister in 2001-2005.
A few years after the 1989 collapse of Communism Bulgaria declared some of the sentences passed by the post-war People's Court illegitimate. Bogdan Filov, the prime minister who signed Bulgaria's alliance with Germany, was absolved. His academic credentials were fully restored and his portrait now hangs in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, a noted archaeologist. Petar Gabrovski, a former Ratnik and interior minister – in actual fact Aleksandar Belev's boss – was also exonerated.
Concurrently, while lauding the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews in 1943 the Bulgarian government employs historians, journalists and even film-makers to "prove" Bulgaria never really occupied northern Greece, Macedonia and southern Serbia, but just "administered" them.
English
Български