Dimitar Peschew

Statue of Dimitar Peschew in Kyustendil

Dimitar Peshev Jossifow ( Bulgarian Димитър Пешев , scientific transliteration. Dimităr Pešev ; born 13 ^jul. / 25. June  1894 ^greg. In Kyustendil , Bulgaria ; † 22. March 1973 , Sofia ) was a Bulgarian national bourgeois politicians. He campaigned actively for the Bulgarian Jews during World War II .

The lawyer Peschew entered the Bulgarian parliament as a deputy . He also stood up for Greater Bulgaria , which at the time meant the annexation of the Yugoslav and Greek parts of Macedonia and the Romanian Dobruja . In 1935 he was Minister of Justice for a short time and was responsible for the introduction of civil marriage. He prevented on March 9, 1943 in his capacity as deputy Bulgarian parliamentary president through his intervention with Interior Minister Gabrowski and with the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III. the evacuation of the Bulgarian Jews. On March 8, 1943, the wagons for deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp were made available in the train stations . In him was a delegation from his home constituency in the evening of March 8 Kyustendil reported.

Manifesto to End Anti-Semitic Measures

After preventing the imminent deportation of the Jews, Peschew worked out a manifesto to end anti-Semitic measures, which he and 42 other MPs signed. He personally presented this manifesto to the head of the State Chancellery on March 17, 1943. This marked the decisive step: The plan to deport the 50,000 Bulgarian Jews, which had been decided largely in secret by Theodor Dannecker and the Bulgarian Commissioner for Jewish Affairs Alexander Belev , had become public.

Bulgarian Orthodox Church

Finally, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church intervened on May 24, 1943 : The head of the church, Stefan von Sofia , who was very respected in the Bulgarian public , turned to Tsar Boris III directly after receiving a delegation of representatives from the Jewish community. and asked him to suspend the deportations immediately, as they were in fundamental contradiction to the traditional tolerance of the Bulgarians . Besides, God would hold him accountable for what he did. On the same day, Metropolitan Stefan celebrated a Te Deum on Alexander Nevsky Square and publicly defended the Jews. He himself took the Grand Rabbi of Sofia under personal protection.

Suspension of anti-Jewish measures

Due to the now pro-Jewish mood in the entire Bulgarian society, Boris III also saw himself. forced to take a position against the deportations, which he had previously avoided with regard to the alliance policy with Nazi Germany. It is true that Boris III. and the Bulgarian leadership for some time because of the threatened German occupation of Bulgaria on the deportation question against Nazi Germany, which repeatedly demanded the execution of the prepared deportations from the Bulgarian government, but the decisive step with the necessary postponement of the measures was taken.

The pressure on the Jewish population eased immediately after the events of May 24, 1943. On August 31, 1944, the “Law for the Protection of the Nation” with all anti-Jewish regulations was repealed. Thanks to the political initiative of MP Peschews, the Bulgarian Jews were able to return to their hometowns, the compulsory wearing of the yellow Star of David was dispensed with and they were again allowed to use their Bulgarian name endings. Around the same time (between May 5 and June 7, 1944) 300,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to the extermination camps. In contrast, after the end of the war, the Bulgarian Jews were able to travel to Israel with the consent of the state , which the vast majority of the Jewish population (45,000) took advantage of.

post war period

At the end of World War II, Peschew immediately kept a determined distance from the communist government that had come to power with Soviet support. Thereupon he was - officially because of his activities in view of the extreme right-wing politics of the Bulgarian parliament (including the passing of racial laws ) - despite his not to be overestimated merits in the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews from their imminent extermination and admitted on February 1, 1945 sentenced to fifteen years ' imprisonment. However, he was released after a year and a half on a pardon . It was only because of the influence of an old school friend that Peschew escaped internment at the beginning of 1948 in one of the re-education camps set up by a resolution of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party , to which the so-called asocial elements (work-shy, drinkers , hooligans, etc.) as well as political opponents were admitted.

Appreciation of his services

During his lifetime, Peschew's services were not recognized either in Bulgaria or internationally, not even by the Jewish or Israeli side. The Bulgarian governments had always prevented the actual events of March 1943 from being published, not least in order to bring the role of the Bulgarian communists in connection with the planned deportation of the Jewish population into the public eye, as this was by no means as committed and energetic as had always been shown by the authorities.

In addition, superficial historiography made a decisive contribution to the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, Tsar Boris III. zu, who ultimately initiated the executive measures to suspend the deportations, but would hardly have been active without Peschew's moral courage, despite personal knowledge of the planned deportations of Jews.

Peschew died completely impoverished on February 20, 1973 in his small apartment in Sofia, after being included in the “ Righteous Among the Nations ” list in January of the same year . Nevertheless, the general public was only made aware of Peschew's work through the investigations of the Italian essayist Gabriele Nissim , who published the results in a book published in 1998. In his book, which was published in a German translation in 2000, he describes Peschew's personal courage and his political fearlessness, which saved the lives of 48,000 Bulgarian Jews.

A museum for Dimitar Peschew has been located in the house where he was born in Kyustendil since 2002 . The international Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has issued a medal with his picture. It was officially commemorated on November 17, 1998 in the European Parliament and on May 1, 2000 in the Knesset . In his honor, a tree was planted in the Garden of the Righteous in Jerusalem. Since then, commemorative events have been held for him worldwide. In Germany, on March 21, 2000, the then President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Thierse, presented the book in the Bundestag .

Peshev Ridge on Livingston Island in Antarctica has been named after him since 2002 .

literature

• Gabriele Nissim : L'uomo che fermo Hitler. La storia di Dimitar Peshev che salvò gli ebrei di una nazione intera. Mondadori, Milano 1998, ISBN 88-04-42209-2 .
• Gabriele Nissim: The man who stopped Hitler. Dimitar Pesev and the Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews. Siedler Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-88680-694-4 .
• Gabriele Nissim: Peschew protest. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 4: Ly-Po. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-476-02504-3 , pp. 509-512.
• Michael Bar-Zohar: Beyond Hitler's grasp. The heroic rescue of Bulgaria's Jews. Adams Media Corporation, Avon MA 1998, ISBN 1-58062-060-4 .
• Димитър Пешев: Спомени. ИК Гутенберг, София, 2004 (Dimitar Peschew, Memories. Verlag Gutenberg, Sofia 2004, published posthumously, only available in Bulgarian), ISBN 954-9943-73-9 .
• Tzvetan Todorov : La fragilité du bien - Le sauvetage des juifs bulgares. Texts réunis et commentés by Tzvetan Todorov. Traduit du bulgare by Marie Vrinat and Irène Kristeva. Albin Michel 1999, Paris (selection and commentary on contemporary texts, translated into French, including excerpts from Peschew's "Memoirs") ISBN 2-226-11086-0 .
• Ангел Джонев: Къща-Музей "Димитър Пешев". Кюстендил 2005 (Angel Džonev, museum house “Dimitar Peschew”. Küstendil 2005, Bulgarian / English) ISBN 954-8191-09-1 .

Web links

Commons : Dimitar Peshev  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Dimitar Peschew in the catalog of the German National Library
• Some details about the time before and after his rescue operation
• Information about Peschew
• Entry about Ditmar Peschev on the Yad Vashem website

Individual evidence

1. ^ Israel Gutman et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Munich and Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , p. 264.