Pavel Gerdschikow

Pawel Dimitrow Gerdschikow ( Bulgarian Павел Димитров Герджиков ; other transcription : Pavel Gerdjikov ; born July 5, 1906 in Shumen ; † July 2, 1985 ) was a Bulgarian doctor. He was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem .

Life

Gerdschikow grew up in Sofia , where he studied medicine. He then moved to Berlin, where he specialized in internal medicine . He then returned to Sofia and established a private practice there . During the Second World War he worked as the chief doctor in a Bulgarian military hospital, but continued his private practice.

In 1943, Pawel Gerdschikow freed four children from one of the death trains that brought Jews from the occupied territories to the extermination camps in Poland. The four Jews came from Greece. Gerdschikow placed one in a childless neighboring family and three others in a monastery.

Alexander Belew , head of the commissariat for Jewish questions, was one of his patients . From this, Gerdschikow learned of the planned deportation of the Jews from Sofia. This enabled him to warn several families in good time. The Levi family, who were also being treated, he hid in his private apartment from May 1943 to January 1944 and provided them with food. He also organized fake passports for the family. In the summer of 1943 Gerdschikov was bombed out while the family was still in his apartment. Gerdschikov rushed home to provide medical care for the injured family. He had the youngest daughter Erika operated on and cared for her undetected in the hospital for several months. Under cover of night, he was able to bring the family to the village of German that same evening . In the chaos of war, the family did not attract attention and so survived the Second World War. In 1948 she emigrated to Israel .

Gerdschikov also helped communists in hiding and wounded German soldiers. As a result, he was arrested by the communist government after the end of the war and spent a year in prison. He then continued working as a doctor in Sofia and started a family in 1964.

In 1980 he was honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. He died in 1985 and was posthumously honored with a medal from the State of Israel for rescuing the four Jewish children from the death train.

literature

• Iva Arakchiyska: Dr. Pavel Gerdjikov and the Levi family: Hiding in Sofia . In: Silent Heroes Memorial Center in the German Resistance Memorial Center Foundation (Ed.): Can a person remain inactive? Help for persecuted Jews in Bulgaria 1940–1944. 1st edition. Lukas, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86732-254-6 , pp. 116-128 .

Web links

• Gerdjikov Family. In: The Righteous Among The Nations. Yad Vashem, accessed April 20, 2018 .