site.btaDr. Haim Pardo: Bulgarians Helped Jewish Families During Second World War

Bulgarians helped Jewish families during the Second World War, Dr. Haim Pardo said in an interview for BTA in connection with the 80th anniversary of the Rescue of Bulgarian Jews. 

"My first memory is from when I was three years old, I was so impressed - my father comes back and tells my mother very sternly that the Law for the Protection of the Nation has been passed, and she jumped up very scared,'" Pardo recounted. 

Haim Pardo was one of the children who dawned on March 10, 1943 in the courtyard of the Jewish school in Plovdiv, where the Jewish community was gathered at night. "I vaguely remember March 10, when my mother, grandmother, grandfather, uncle and three aunts and I were picked up in the middle of the night," he said. His family lived around Thursday Market - he alone with his mother because his father was in a labour camp at the time. "My mother managed to wrap me up with something because it was very cold, and they took us to the Jewish school," he said. He doesn't remember when the Plovdiv Metropolitan came, but he remembers that everything quieted down when he started talking. "As far as I understood afterwards, he said he would do his best and not to despair," Pardo said. "It was full of people outside and a friend of my mother's, Aunt Danka, was saying, 'give him to me because they're going to make soap out of you.' I remember because I found it interesting - soap. And now I wonder how politicians used to say they didn't know where they were going to send us, but Aunt Danka, who was an ordinary woman, knew," he said. 

Other close Bulgarian friends still live in his memories. One of them was the petty trader Vasko Vitanov. He was the man who helped his three aunts keep their income after the Law for the Protection of the Nation was passed. My aunts had a small perfumery called "Detelinka" on the main street in Plovdiv, which had to be liquidated, but Vasko Vitanov offered to keep us working and that he was as if buying it, and when times got better, he would return it, Pardo said. 

One of Pardo's aunts worked as an accountant for Pantalei Genov, who developed the canning industry in Bulgaria, and who was also at the school that night. "Sometime around 10:00 a.m. they said 'go home' and then I found out that there were a lot of demonstrations by the 'flower' of Plovdiv, including the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Obreiko Obreikov, who organized gatherings and sent a letter to the king, but it never arrived," Pardo said.

From his childhood, Pardo remembers the curfew - 6 p.m. - and a fine his mother paid for him breaking it. "I remember that my mother had many Bulgarian friends who brought me presents," he said, adding that he did not starve as a child even though he was thin. "What I ate I don't know, but the children from the neighbourhood used to describe to us what a steak meant," he said. "I remember how delicious it tasted the first time I ate bacon. It was after September 9 when my father brought some and we decided to try it, even though it is forbidden to us Jews," he added.

Pardo's father had graduated from a trade school and even had one or two semesters in Sofia, but did not have enough money to finish. He was put in a labour camp in 1941. "They used to take them somewhere in February-March and release them in October-November. All I know is that once he came back wearing some kind of coat and my mother stripped him right from the door because he had lice. She used to kill them one by one with a patten," Pardo said. His father was in the camps most of the year and "it was a matter of survival." "We weren't always well fed, but the actual money that came in was from my aunt the accountant and from the perfumery," he said. There were no deaths in his family in those years.

After the Second World War, Pardo's father worked as an accountant and became a director in various nationalised factories. "In 1948, the Jews were starting to move out, and my father used to say 'it's going to be paradise here, we're free now,'" Pardo said. He was raised by his father that anti-Semitism was over and that they were like all people. "Unfortunately, though, over the years, I've come to realize it's still around," Pardo said, pointing to an instance during his student years when a colleague insisted he be expelled because he was Jewish. 

Dr Haim Pardo was born in 1938 and worked for decades as a surgeon in Plovdiv until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when he ended his career at the age of 82. 

Bulgaria will be marking the 80th anniversary of the salvation of Bulgarian Jews in 2023. The anniversary raises many historical and historiographical questions about who the rescuers were, what made this great humanitarian act possible and why it happened in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), in partnership with the Alef Jewish-Bulgarian Cooperation Center, set itself the task of answering these questions with the help of prominent scholars, public figures, and experts on the subject with a series of articles to recall the events of the past and the participants in them, and to present the importance of the rescue and the rescuers.

Bulgaria and Denmark are believed to be the only countries that did not allow their Jewish citizens to be deported to Nazi death camps. Nearly 50,000 lives were saved in Bulgaria. According to information on the website of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center, Bulgaria had 50,000 Jews before World War II and zero victims. It is the only country with zero victims.