Saving of Bulgarian Jews: “One of the Greatest Moral Assets of Bulgaria”

Although this is one of the greatest moral assets of the State, not much was known about the rescue of Bulgarian Jews back in the years for purely ideological reasons, historian Silvia Avdala said in a BTA interview. She was approached on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the salvation of Bulgarian Jews. 

“The People's Court killed the majority of the saviors of the Bulgarian Jews. Another significant part were repressed. During all these years, the heirs remained silent. They were discreetly interned somewhere in the countryside and they decided that this story was going to be buried. But after all, at some point, someone somewhere decided that this asset must be activated,” said the historian. 

The archives talk: Beckerle case

“Things became really clear in 1967 in Frankfurt, during the trial of the former German ambassador to Sofia, Adolf Heinz Beckerle. It subsequently transpired that there was another defendant, Fritz Von Hahn, Legation Secretary in the German Foreign Office at the time, who was in fact the main organizer of the deportation of the Macedonian and Aegean Jews. The defense speech of Beckerle's lawyer made it clear that in fact the rescue of the Jews from the Bulgarian Old Lands was possible thanks to the Bulgarian state institutions, headed by King Boris III. The trial became world news, all European media wrote about it, there were comments in Israel. What is more, while that trial was ongoing on, and the investigation which lasted nine years, another trial started in Israel, the Eichmann case. It lasted just over a year from start to finish, and the same things were said there. And, somehow, the Bulgarian State authorities then in no way wanted to talk about the role of King Boris III. Particularly with regard to the Beckerle case, they made every possible attempt, through the State Security Service, to make sure the trial was manipulated. The attempts failed. They also failed to activate a “guilt mode” in the Bulgarian state for the deportation of  Macedonian and Aegean Jews. Categorically, it becomes clear for all experts invited in this trial how difficult this process had been be over time. Those were a series of state acts that in the end were crowned with success: all citizens of Jewish origin on Bulgarian territory were saved,” said Avdala.

She said that it became clear in this trial in Germany, from the enclosed documents, that the Bulgarian State saved several thousand more Jews from other countries like Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia. “And that also contributes to the verdict – first, the court pronounced clearly about the guilt of the Bulgarian State, and its firm conclusion was that the Bulgarian State, the King and government, were not responsible for the deportation of the Macedonian and Aegean Jews.” 

To this day, the Beckerle case file is kept in the central Hesse archives in Wiesbaden, which is the regional archives authority in the Province of Hesse, which includes Frankfurt. “It turned out that this trial record has 80,000 pages. Huge!” said Avdala.

The Red Cross archive in Geneva 

“The documents relating to the role of the Bulgarian state in the rescue of foreign citizens as well, led us to search the archives of institutions that were directly involved in these processes. Such an institution turned out to be the International Red Cross. The International Red Cross has an archive in Geneva which offers free access but at the same time is extremely difficult to get into because there is one reading room for 5 people and there are researchers from all over the world, waiting for several months to get into it. And it turned out that this unique archive provides invaluable information into the Bulgarian government's relationship with the Red Cross as an institution with regard to organizing transits. It shows, for example, how 200 children or 400 children, in 1943 when absolutely all border in Europe were sealed for Jews, passed through Bulgaria with papers perfectly arranged by the state institutions, and exited the country via Svilengrad en route to Palestine. And over time, one realizes that there could be no institutional anti-Semitism in a country which only treated its Jews in this way,” said Silvia Avdala.

Central Zionist Archives

She says that interesting documentary evidence of the events in those days are to be found in the Central Zionist Archive. 

“We came across the letters of the then Chief Mufti of Jerusalem, Minel Hussein, who wrote to Hitler voicing disagreement that his allies would treat in this way the Jews, who were arriving in such large numbers in the then British territory of Palestine that they upset the balance in the Middle East, and suggesting that they be directed to other, more controlled territories such as Poland. And yes, there are letters like that. They were send not only to Hitler but to all his allies as well. There is one such letter, if I'm not mistaken, sent by the then Bulgarian ambassador in Berlin, Parvan Draganov, who sent the letter to Bogdan Filov for information. Of course, nothing followed after that letter,” the historian says. 

Black bread is better than black headscarves

She argues that the rescue of Bulgarian Jews was the result of strong decisions by the State, which were backed by ordinary people.

“There are really two factors why we should consider this act unique. The first is that all the Jews of the Bulgarian kingdom were saved. And the second factor is that this was done by the State - which by the way at the time was, at least formally, a Hitler ally,” she said. 

She said it was even more interesting for her to see in the archives the documents relating to how Bulgaria entered the war. “And the attempts to get out of it are no less interesting. You know, the attempts to get out go back to the early 1943. Because we realized very early on, from the very start, that it was a most difficult decision. It was not our war. There's a unique communication by American Ambassador George Earle, who sent it two weeks before the entry into the Pact was signed and after which he had to leave Sofia automatically. He listened to a speech by Bogdan Filov, who at that time was already in Rousse. The pontoon bridges were being built on the Danube for the German tanks to cross, and they were going to cross regardless of whether we were allies and how much we agreed or not. And in this speech, he said that national socialism may be good for Germany, Bolshevism for Russia and Fascism for Italy, but none of those was good for Bulgaria. That was Bogdan Filov's programmatic speech about the war. That's the attitude to this war and it's very clearly defined in the beginning of this war. And the principle of King Boris - black bread is better than black headscarves and always with Germany, never against Russia - was very firmly established for a statesman who has already truly experienced, at a very young age, the horror of the First World War. That's when he went into the trenches and lost many of his military school classmates there, in front of his eyes. He knew that if there was going to be things like that, a Bulgarian soldier was not going to go fight outside the Bulgarian borders,” Avdala went on to say. 

80 years later

“It's a beautiful story that is overloaded with myths, half-truths and downright lies. It is beautiful as is, nothing has to be added to it or taken away from it for it to be real. Look how hard it is, for example, for Bulgarian diplomats abroad, who in some cases, don't even know what to say, don't even know how to explain it when asked about it. They are not ready for it and it's the Bulgarian State's fault. Indeed, during all these years no one has been able to truly tell this story in its entirety. And to tell you the truth, Bulgarian historiography was also a real debtor to the subject. Nobody dared to reach very far. It was assumed that whatever was available in the state archives and what we already know here, was sufficient. Well, it is not,” Avdala said. She said that the UK national archive, to take one example, has plenty of documents about how access was limited for Jews to what was then British territory of Palestine was actually a huge array of documents.

The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), in partnership with the Alef Jewish-Bulgarian Cooperation Center, set itself the task to recall the events of the past and the participants in them, and to present the importance of the rescue and the rescuers. 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.