Bulgarian Jews Saved from Hitler

[JAD_333]

This was emailed to me by a firend. Never heard of this slice of WWII history. I was wondering if this was a relatively new revelation or if it's was well known already to history buffs.



SUBJECT: Beyond Hitler's Grasp !!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


A great many Jews know the story of how the Danes rescued 8,000 Jews
from the Nazi's by smuggling them to Sweden in fishing boats.

Very few Jews, know the story of how all 50,000 Bulgarian Jews were
saved. Not a single Bulgarian Jew was deported to the death camps,
due to the heroism of many Bulgarians of every walk of life, up to and
including the King and the Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

In 1999, Abraham Foxman, the National Director of the Anti Defamation
League flew with a delegation to Sophia to meet the Bulgarian Prime
Minister. He gave the Prime Minister the first Bulgarian language copy
of a remarkable book, "Beyond Hitler's Grasp," written in 1998, by
Michael Bar Oar, a professor at Emory University.
(A Bulgarian Jew who had migrated to Israel and then to the USA ).

This book documents the rescue effort in detail. The ADL paid for and
shipped 30,000 copies to Bulgaria , so that the population could partake
in the joy of learning about this heroic facet of their history.

This story is clearly the last great secret of the Holocaust era. The story
was buried by the Bulgarian Communists, until their downfall in 1991.
All records were sealed, since they didn't wish to glorify the King, or the
Church, or the non Communist parliamentarians, who at great personal
risk, stood up to the Germans. And the Bulgarian Jewish Community,
45,000 of whom went to Israel after the War, were busy building new
lives, and somehow the story remained untold.



Bulgaria is a small country and at the outset of the War they had 8 million
people. They aligned themselves with the Nazi's in hopes of recapturing
Macedonia from Yugoslavia and Thrace from Greece . Both provinces were
stripped from them, after W.W.I. In late 1942 the Jews of Selonica were
shipped north through Bulgaria , on the way to the death camps, in sealed
box cars. The news of this inhumanity was a hot topic of conversation. Then,

at the beginning of 1943, the pro Nazi Bulgarian government was informed
that all 50,000 Bulgarian Jews would be deported in March. The Jews had
been made to wear yellow stars and were highly visible.



As the date for the deportation got closer, the agitation got greater.
Forty-three ruling party members of Parliament walked out in protest.
Newspapers denounced what was about to happen. In addition, the Patriarch
of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Krill, threatened to lie down
on
the railroad tracks. Finally, King Boris III forbade the deportation. Since
Bulgaria was an ally of Germany , and the Germans were stretched militarily,

they had to wrestle with the problem of how much pressure they could
afford to apply. They decided to pass.

Several points are noteworthy. The Bulgarian Jews were relatively
unreligious
and did not stand apart from the local populace by virtue of garb, or rites.
They
were relatively poor by comparison to Jews in other countries, and they
lived
in integrated neighbor-hoods. Additionally, the Bulgarians had many
minorities,
Armenians, Turks, Greeks, and Gypsies, in addition to Jews.



There was no concept of racism in that culture. The bottom line here is that

Bulgarians saw Bulgarian-Jews as Bulgarians, and not as Jews. And, being
a small country, like Denmark , where there was a closeness of community
that is often missing in larger countries. So, here was a bright spot that
we
can point to as example of what should have been.



The most famous of those saved was a young graduate of the Bulgarian
Military
Academy . When he arrived in Israel , he changed his name to Moshe
Dayan.....

[neyzen]

There was no concept of racism in that culture.

Just funny.

[glyn]

A fascinating story, and one I had never heard before. I like the observation that it was a small country and thus people thought and behaved differently.

[wkllaw]

Wow, this is interesting. We still have so much interesting details in history that still aren't known.

[JAD_333]

Just funny.

How so? I know nothing of Bulgaria.

[Shamus]

Just funny.

I also am curious as to the humor you find in that statement.Please educate us as to why you believe that the thought of a culture without racism is "Just funny".Did you live in Bulgaria during this time period and experience racism at the hands of Bulgarians?

[Stan187]

I think he's saying that it's not likely that any culture had no racism. It's like at the Holocaust museum where there are two doors with one that say's "I'm prejudiced" and one that says "I'm not prejudiced", only the second one is locked because everyone is in one way or to some degree.

[Big K]

it is funny because when we say the very same thing (about underlined part) anybody care...this is the double standard...

"There was no concept of racism in that culture. The bottom line here is that

Bulgarians saw Bulgarian-Jews as Bulgarians, and not as Jews. And, being
a small country, like Denmark , where there was a closeness of community
that is often missing in larger countries. So, here was a bright spot that
we
can point to as example of what should have been."

on the other hand in Bulgaria there was many Turks forced to change their Turkish names in to Bulgarian names...

West forgot so easily Mr. Todor Jivkov and what has he done some decades ago...

[Big K]

it is very ironic that when Bulgarian army fought alongside with Germans at the very same time their people showed a great humanitarian effort against their allies...

i think this prove my sayings about peoples can not be enemys of eachother, it is the politics...

[Itzaak]

This piece is completly revisionist and ignores the basic fact that the worst place in Axis occupied Europe for Jews was in fact the Bulgarian annexed and occupied zones of Greek Thrace and (then) Yugoslav Macedonia. These areas had the highest proportion of Jewish arrests and deaths in all of Europe.

My grandmother came from the Greek town of Xanthi. The Bulgarian occupation was so terrible that Jews were going to the German zone where conditions were better! Bulgarian troops beat, burned business and raped and murdered Jews, Greeks and Turks there endlessly. The Greek deacon (sub priest) was killed after he helped my grandmother (who lost her entire family and was one of two Jews to survive from the entire town) and a young Turkish girl escape.

I was at a conference about five years ago where someone went over the numbers of our people killed in each Balkan country and tied proportionally to to antisemitism. this is a perversion of logic, history and the memory of the dead.

The population of the Jews in Yugoslavia and Greece were annihilated precisely because the Yugoslavia and Greek people in those countries fought against the axis (delivering the first real victories against the axis at a time when the USSR was neutral!) and their ability to resist or have any say was destroyed.

A group of descendants of survivors recently was able to reverse the nomination of certain World War Two Bulgarian officials by Israel as "righteous" by showing they were active perptators of the Holocaust in areas they occupied.

But the half truth portrayed in the original post here persist.

Moshe Dayan never went ot the Bulgarian military academy and never was in Bulgaria. He was born on a Kibbutz in Israel, his family were very early immigrants (1915) from Ukraine.

Many Greeks and Yugoslavs died fighting Hitler's war machine in fact huge numbers, many died saving Jews. The Turkish government and people were also sympathetic. The Bulgarian government took huge bribes, confiscated and kept massive amounts of property and monies, and in the areas they occupied ruthlessly deported the entire Jewish population and handed them over tot he Germans for extermination.

I have nothing against the Bulgarian people, but this bogus happy face rewrite of history, which largely comes from communist sources writing when all the Bulgarian government sources were sealed, is a complete perversion of history.

[JAD_333]

This piece is completly revisionist and ignores the basic fact that the worst place in Axis occupied Europe for Jews was in fact the Bulgarian annexed and occupied zones of Greek Thrace and (then) Yugoslav Macedonia. These areas had the highest proportion of Jewish arrests and deaths in all of Europe.

My grandmother came from the Greek town of Xanthi. The Bulgarian occupation was so terrible that Jews were going to the German zone where conditions were better! Bulgarian troops beat, burned business and raped and murdered Jews, Greeks and Turks there endlessly. The Greek deacon (sub priest) was killed after he helped my grandmother (who lost her entire family and was one of two Jews to survive from the entire town) and a young Turkish girl escape.

I was at a conference about five years ago where someone went over the numbers of our people killed in each Balkan country and tied proportionally to to antisemitism. this is a perversion of logic, history and the memory of the dead.

The population of the Jews in Yugoslavia and Greece were annihilated precisely because the Yugoslavia and Greek people in those countries fought against the axis (delivering the first real victories against the axis at a time when the USSR was neutral!) and their ability to resist or have any say was destroyed.

A group of descendants of survivors recently was able to reverse the nomination of certain World War Two Bulgarian officials by Israel as "righteous" by showing they were active perptators of the Holocaust in areas they occupied.

But the half truth portrayed in the original post here persist.

Moshe Dayan never went ot the Bulgarian military academy and never was in Bulgaria. He was born on a Kibbutz in Israel, his family were very early immigrants (1915) from Ukraine.

Many Greeks and Yugoslavs died fighting Hitler's war machine in fact huge numbers, many died saving Jews. The Turkish government and people were also sympathetic. The Bulgarian government took huge bribes, confiscated and kept massive amounts of property and monies, and in the areas they occupied ruthlessly deported the entire Jewish population and handed them over tot he Germans for extermination.

I have nothing against the Bulgarian people, but this bogus happy face rewrite of history, which largely comes from communist sources writing when all the Bulgarian government sources were sealed, is a complete perversion of history.

That is certainly an eye-opener; you are correct about Moshe Dayan. Do you have any source material on the rest of your post, other than the family accounts.

[Itzaak]

That is certainly an eye-opener; you are correct about Moshe Dayan. Do you have any source material on the rest of your post, other than the family accounts.

On the numbers they approach 98%. In Thrace About 20 Jews survived out of 8,500. Over 7,500 were sent to treblinka, and about 1000 were impressed into Bulgarian "labo r Battalions" and died (many Greeks and Turks in Thrace had that fate as well.). In Pirin macedonia the numbers were similar.

[Itzaak]

May I suggest you read this:
Project MUSE

This all blew up when this meme of reversing Bulgarian atrocities against the Jews accelerated with the publication of a number of books forgetting what happned in Greece and Yugoslavia and peaking with the dedication a memorial forest to King Boris was placed in Israel (which as latter renamed).

[ihalatchev]

yes partially true, see Moshe Dayan - Indopedia, the Indological knowledgebase

One of the brothers of my grandmother was a young cadet at the Royal Military Academy at Sofia, Bulgaria when Moshe Dayan graduated as the first in his class.

Early life
Moshe Dayan was born in a kibbutz, Deganya Alef (Deganya "A"), Palestine then still part of the Ottoman Empire, near the Kineret Sea of Galilee . His parents were Shmuel and Devorah, and he was the first child born in the newly-established community. Aged 14 he joined the Haganah at a very early stage. He was greatly influenced by the military teachings of the English pro-Zionist officer Orde Wingate when Dayan was a seargent prior to World War II. He went to Bulgaria where he graduated from the military academy.

[LetsTalk]

I have read in several places that the Bulgarians protected the Jews in Bulgaria but not in Greece.

Axis occupation of Greece during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"In May 1943 deportment of Jews from the Bulgarian occupation zone began as well.[12]"

History of the Jews in Greece - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"86% of the Greek Jews, especially those in the areas occupied by Nazi Germany and Bulgaria, were murdered despite efforts by the Greek Orthodox Church hierarchy and many individual Christian Greeks to shelter Jews. Although the Germans and Bulgarians[14] deported a great number of Greek Jews, others were successfully hidden by their Greek neighbours."

My Grandparents adopted my ant, a Jewish girl (5 to 6 at the time), and renamed her Maria, to hide her identity. They lived in Patra, Greece, which was occupied by the Italians, so they did not have it as bad as others did. Regardless they hid her in a 6X6 shed for 2-3 years during the occupation. My Gandparents already had 7 kids, Maria was #8. Grandfather died during the occupation.