Rescue the Bulgarian Jews

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The rescue of the Bulgarian Jews in March 1943 during the time of National Socialism was achieved through the efforts of the Bulgarian politicians and intellectuals, the Bulgarian King Boris III. and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church possible.

Historical context

Bulgaria became absolutist from King Boris III in 1935 . led, which from 1938 was assisted by a parliament with limited powers. The Bulgarian leadership initially pursued a policy of neutrality, but joined the three-power pact in March 1941 and was able to realize its territorial claims on Thrace , Macedonia and Pirot . Bulgaria largely retained its independence and is therefore a special case among the states allied with the Greater German Reich. Interior Minister Peter Gabrovski and his “Jew Commissioner” Alexander Belev drafted the first anti-Semitic law in the summer of 1940 . The Nation Protection Act provided for the registration of Jews and economic and political restrictions. Jews should resign from public office. Parts of their property were confiscated and a special tax was levied. Access to some professions should be restricted. Here someone was not considered a Jew who had converted to Christianity, married to Bulgarians or entered the military. Despite heated debates and a broad protest movement, the law came into force on January 23, 1941.

Commissariat for Jewish questions

In June 1942, Martin Luther from the Foreign Office asked the Bulgarian government to consent to the deportation of its nationals residing in Germany, to adopt the racist definition of “Jew” based on the German model and to delete exceptions. On August 26, 1942, the " Commissariat for Jewish Issues " ( Komisarstvo za evreiskite vuprosi - KEV ) was set up by government decree , for which up to 160 people were employed. At the top was the anti-Semite Alexander Belev, who implemented the German desire to a large extent.

Marking Jews with a small yellow button in August 1942 was one of the numerous discriminatory measures. The houses and businesses should also be marked. In addition, the Jews' real assets were confiscated and their financial assets were “secured” in blocked accounts, their radios and bicycles were confiscated, the exercise of their profession was restricted and a service obligation was arranged in separate labor columns. A registration of the Jews showed that 51,500 lived in Old Bulgaria and a further 11,900 in the annexed areas.

In October 1942 the Foreign Office took the initiative again on the “Jewish question”. The German envoy in Sofia, Adolf Heinz Beckerle , informed Section D III of the Foreign Office that Bulgaria was in principle ready to deport the Jews. The Foreign Office and the Reich Security Main Office were equally involved in the appointment of a “ Jewish advisor ” . In January 1943, Theodor Dannecker began working for the police attaché Karl Hoffmann in Sofia.

To the disappointment of Walter Schellenberg , the Bulgarian government reacted evasively. There is still no uniform approval of deportations in the cabinet, allegedly the Jews are still urgently needed for road and railroad construction and the Bulgarian population would lack understanding. While reservations were still being made at a higher level, Belev and Dannecker signed an agreement on December 22, 1943 to deport 20,000 Jews "from the recently liberated territories" by the end of May. In view of the numbers - fewer than 12,000 Jews lived there in total - this restriction was unsustainable and was tacitly removed after the cabinet approved on March 2. This paved the way for Jews to be deported from Old Bulgaria.

Rescue operations

When the police rounded up Jews in Kjustendil in March 1943 , it became clear that, contrary to the cabinet decision , the action was not limited to Jews from the captured territories, but also included Jews of Bulgarian nationality in Old Bulgaria. Numerous individuals, church representatives, writers as well as Jako Baruh from the illegal Zionist center tried to intervene. Dimitar Peschew , a Bulgarian lawyer and also Vice-President of Parliament, personally informed Prime Minister Bogdan Filov about the violation, which was caused to stop the transports from Old Bulgaria. Peschew wrote a manifesto to end the anti-Semitic measures. It contained the note that the eviction would ultimately lead to death. He was able to convince another 42 parliamentarians to sign the document. Peschew presented this manifesto to the Prime Minister on March 19, 1943. The protests spread in the popular assembly, but there was no majority against the government's course. Peschew resigned on March 26 after a public statement.

The deportations from the territories occupied by Bulgaria during World War II continued as planned until March 29, 1943. 11,343 Jews were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp . At the same time, at a British-American summit in Washington, DC , the British announced that, in view of what was going on in Bulgaria, they were ready to accept Jews into Palestine. A corresponding proposal was sent through the Bern embassy. However, it was only in the face of further military successes that the Allied pressure had an effect.

End of the deportations

During a visit to Boris III. in Berlin, which took place in April 1943, Joachim von Ribbentrop emphasized the need for a more far-reaching radical solution, while the Bulgarian king claimed to have to withhold at least 25,000 employable Jews for important public works. Commissioner for Jews Belev drafted a step-by-step deportation plan which, as a first step, envisaged the evacuation of 16,000 Jews from Sofia, either to Poland “for security reasons” or to the provinces. The king only agreed to the latter version, which, however, did not rule out a later "radical solution". On May 24, 1943, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church intervened. Stefan I of Sofia received a delegation of representatives of the Jewish community and immediately turned to Tsar Boris III. and demanded that all deportations be suspended. On the same day, he also publicly stood up for the Jews and gave a speech in front of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral . However, the expulsion of the Jews from Sofia continued.

In a letter to his superiors in April 1943, the German police attaché in Bulgaria stated that the population had neither the ideological nor the “racial requirements” to support the deportations. The envoy Beckerle wrote that one had to take into account the Bulgarian mentality, the lack of ideological strength and their lack of understanding of anti-Semitism and that the Bulgarian government should not be put under too much pressure. Only a German victory could have a lasting effect.

After the sudden death of Boris III. on August 28, 1943 the cabinet was restructured. The legal restrictions remained in place, but were not tightened. With the advance of the Red Army, German influence waned. On August 31, 1944, the cabinet - again restructured - repealed all laws and decrees affecting Jews. After the Red Army invaded Bulgaria, the new government declared war on Germany on September 9th. Almost all of the 50,000 Bulgarian Jews from the Old Reich were saved. As of May 1948, more than 40,000 of them left Bulgaria and settled in Israel .

Interpretations

Hans-Heinrich Hoppe shows that the Bulgarians have lived closely with other nationalities and minorities such as Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Roma and Jews for centuries and therefore had no anti-Semitic reservations apart from splinter groups. The Bulgarian leadership took over the German Jewish legislation only half-heartedly and only as long as they could expect protection from the Soviet Union and fulfillment of their territorial wishes.

The protests by the political opposition had only limited effect. The massive protests of Bulgarian society were decisive for the change of mind of the government. The weakened German position and publicity in western countries, especially among the Allies, also contributed to the change in government policy, the postponement of the deportations.

The encyclopedia of the Holocaust , which has remained at the research level from 1993, considers the question of who was responsible for the rescue of the 50,000 Jews to be "still open". The official version tries to attribute the act to the communists. This version cannot be proven. One of the representatives of the Bulgarian Jews, Benjamin Arditi, claims that King Boris decided against their deportation in March and May 1943. This is also not documented.

In her social science dissertation, completed in 2004, Rossitza Ivkova gives an overview of the Bulgarian research results published after 1990. Many of the authors focus on the question of which individual was responsible for the rescue act. Bar-Zohar denotes the King Boris III. as a savior, because at the crucial moment he changed his policy and prevented the deportation of the old Bulgarian Jews. Nissim names Dimitar Peschew as the most important person in the decision-making process. But the rescue act is also attributed to the patriarch Stefan and the KPD party leader Todor Zhivkov .

Since the end of the 1990s, the debate in Bulgaria and Israel has shifted from “saving the Bulgarian Jews” to the subject of “deporting the New Bulgarian Jews” and the responsibility of state organizations for this. Rossitza Ivkova considers the widespread explanations according to which Bulgaria was powerless in the new areas and had to comply with German pressure, in view of the sources, to be incorrect. Rather, these Jews were released for deportation because they were viewed as a threat to security and to the Bulgarian regime. The New Bulgarian Jews had fallen victim to a general ethno-nationalist policy which aimed at a Greater Bulgarian state as its main goal and wanted to drive out minorities.

Volume 13 of the VEJ source edition, published in 2018, relativizes the long prevailing assessment that Bulgaria successfully opposed the demand to extradite the Jews to the German Reich. 49,000 Jews from the Bulgarian heartland survived, but the Bulgarians transferred 11,300 Jews from the areas they occupied. The Jewish population was used as "a kind of bargaining chip" to get support with their own territorial claims. The “myth of a nation of saviors” has only recently been critically questioned by Bulgarian historians with regard to Bulgarian responsibility for initiating and implementing persecution measures and deportations from the occupied territories.

The historian Daniel Siemens pointed out that Bulgaria allowed the deportation of 11,343 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace in March 1943 (these areas had only been part of Bulgaria since 1941). He sees three reasons for banning the deportation of Jews living in the Bulgarian heartland: At the beginning of 1942, word got around about the Holocaust, which triggered protests in the Bulgarian government. In addition, the German defeat at Stalingrad at the beginning of February 1943 was viewed by the Bulgarian government as a turning point in the war, which made a search for other options appear opportune. In addition, further deportations prevented Bulgaria from exploiting and robbing “its” Jews itself.

Jews from other European countries

With the support of the Bulgarian Queen Johanna , the Italian ambassador in Sofia issued Italian passports and transit visas for Jews of foreign nations living in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian King Boris III. helped thousands of Jews from Slovakia get transit visas to Palestine.

literature

  • 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
  • Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Dimensions of genocide. The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism. dtv Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04690-2
  • Rossitza Ivkova: Rescue and murder in genocidal decision-making processes: Bulgaria 1941 - 1943 , dissertation Bielefeld 2004 - online pdf (3.62 MB)
  • 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.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Dimensions of genocide. The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism. dtv Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 , pp. 275-277.
  2. ↑ Document VEJ 13/286 in Mariana Hausleitner u. a. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (collection of sources) Volume 13: Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria . Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-036500-9 , pp. 593–600.
  3. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Dimensions of genocide. The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism. dtv Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 , pp. 280-281.
  4. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Dimensions of genocide. The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism. dtv Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 , p. 282.
  5. ^ Israel Gutman et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Munich and Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , Vol. 2, S, 752.
  6. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Dimensions of genocide. The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism. dtv Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 , pp. 283-285.
  7. ↑ Document VEJ 13/307 in Mariana Hausleitner u. a. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of the European Jews ... Volume 13: Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria . Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-036500-9 , pp. 643–645.
  8. ↑ Eckart Conze; Norbert Frei; Peter Hayes; Mosche Zimmermann: The Office and the Past - German Diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 , pp. 282–284.
  9. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Dimensions of genocide. The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism. dtv Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 , pp. 286-288.
  10. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Dimensions of genocide. The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism. dtv Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 , pp. 289-291.
  11. ^ Israel Gutman et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Munich and Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , Vol. 1, p. 264.
  12. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Dimensions of genocide. The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism. dtv Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 , pp. 299-302.
  13. ^ Israel Gutman et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Munich and Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , p. 262.
  14. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Dimensions of genocide. The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism. dtv Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 , p. 305.
  15. ^ Hans-Joachim Hoppe: Bulgaria. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Dimensions of genocide. The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism. dtv Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 , p. 309
  16. ^ Israel Gutman et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Munich and Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , Vol. 1, p. 267.
  17. ↑ Rossitza Ivkova: Rescue and murder in genocidal decision-making processes: Bulgaria 1941-1943 . Dissertation Bielefeld 2004 - Online pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (3.62 MB) esp. Pp. 24-91@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / pub.uni-bielefeld.de  
  18. ↑ So Ivkova with reference to Michael Bar-Zohar: Beyond Hitler's Grasp. The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews, Holbrooke, Mass. 1999
  19. ↑ So Ivkova with reference to Gabrielle Nissim: The man who stopped Hitler. Dimitar Pesev and the Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, Berlin 2000
  20. ↑ Rossitza Ivkova: Rescue and murder in genocidal decision-making processes: Bulgaria 1941-1943, dissertation Bielefeld 2004, p. 26.
  21. ↑ Rossitza Ivkova: Rescue and murder in genocidal decision-making processes: Bulgaria 1941 - 1943, dissertation Bielefeld 2004, p 39-42.
  22. ↑ Rossitza Ivkova: Rescue and murder in genocidal decision-making processes: Bulgaria 1941 - 1943, dissertation Bielefeld 2004, p 61 and S. 191st
  23. ↑ Mariana Hausleitner u. a. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945. (Source Collection), Volume 13: Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria . Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-036500-9 , p. 93.
  24. ↑ Mariana Hausleitner u. a. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ... Vol. 13, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-036500-9 , p. 92.
  25. ^ Daniel Siemens: Sturmabteilung. The history of the SA. Siedler, Munich 2019, p. 394