Ep. 56- The Holocaust in Bulgaria with Nadége Ragaru

The story of Bulgaria and the Holocaust is often a narrative about how Bulgaria protected its Jews from the Nazis. But is this really case?  Certainly not in the case of Thrace and Macedonia.

 In this episode, I talked with Nadege Ragaru about the history of the complex Holocaust in Bulgaria and its attempts to come to terms with this past.

Nadège Ragaru is a research professor at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po Paris.

Ragaru, Nadége.  Bulgaria, the Jews, and the Holocaust: On the Origins of a Heroic Narrative (2023)

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Email the podcast at holocausthistorypod@gmail.com

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06)
So.

Speaker 2 (00:08)
to say yes.

Speaker 1 (00:12)
Yeah. OK. Hopefully I can download this recording at some point. ⁓

Okay. ⁓ and I'll have to cut out some of this intro stuff. Okay. If you're ready to go, ⁓ I'll just do a brief pause.

Hello everybody. Welcome to the Holocaust History Podcast. I'm your host, Waitman Bourne. And today we are delving into another area of the Holocaust history that a lot of folks probably ⁓ don't know lot about. And that is the Holocaust in Bulgaria. And also the really, really interesting memory work ⁓ about the confronting or not confronting of that Holocaust pass in Bulgaria and throughout the region.

And so with me, have Nadezh Rogaru who has written an excellent book on ⁓ precisely this topic. And so Nadezh, thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 2 (01:14)
Thank you for inviting me, it's pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:16)
Can you start by just telling us how you got into this particular topic?

Speaker 2 (01:22)
That was actually by chance. I was working at the time on the essential power of the communists in Bulgaria at the end of World War II. And I was working through the prism of the history of theatre. I was making an interview with an old man and trying to understand how the programming had been changing. And at some point he was trying to recollect something from his youth, from a theatre play he'd seen. And I well, no, that was, that was, yeah.

before they deported the Jews. And I just stopped and I turned to the method, what Jews? And all I knew at the time about Bulgaria that Bulgaria had not deported Jews. And he turned to me and he said, well, this is not the kind of thing you want to talk about. And I knew that that interview was done for, there was no way could stay focused on what he had said. So I just left a few minutes later out of blindness and I went to see some colleagues at the university and I said, ⁓ what Jews?

And it took them some time because they we'll get it not import Jews. And then after a few days, said, well, maybe those were the great Jews they passed by. And so the next morning, at the time I was in Blackworkat, I took the bus to go back to Sofia, went straight to the archives and started doing research. And something happened to me, which is exactly what by the book you should never do. I mean, you should never order by keywords. it so happened I had

the local archives of the Jewish community of Perama ⁓ in Greece. ⁓ in this local book, there was a piece of paper, slightly yellow, it had been typed in pale blue, which was not typical. It was written highly secretive. And that was the plan for the deportation of Jews from the city of Perama. That actually changed ⁓ my, let's say, work path rather than career path.

I realized that I had been working on Bogaire for nearly 20 years and I did not know. So the question was how was it possible to have read so much, worked so much, talked so much and not have been aware of that. So I started a very long research and it actually took me about 10 years to catch up with the complexities of it all, trying to understand what happened during World War II and why it was that even among later people

⁓ There was little awareness of the facts of World War II and the rural Bulgaria and the deportation of Jews from the occupied territories of Yugoslavia and Greece. But that's how it all started.

Speaker 1 (03:57)
And this is something interesting, Tim, we'll definitely talk about this because, you know, the place of Bulgaria in both the axis, as well as in the Holocaust and then as well as in sort of its ⁓ place in Holocaust memory is a really interesting and sort of complex question. Maybe we can start with ⁓ how the Jewish community in Bulgaria is different perhaps than or was different perhaps than other Eastern European ⁓

Jewish communities at the time.

Speaker 2 (04:28)
Yeah, I think it's actually an extremely important point. The Jewish community in Bulgaria prior to the Second World War was a rather small community. It was estimated, according to the census of 1934, around 48,000 people. A few more thousand Jews came actually in the late 1930s because of oppression on the part of the Reich and the events taking place in Central Europe. But what is extremely important is that Bulgaria, until 1878,

had been part and parcel of the Ottoman Empire. This is actually how, after the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal, a large number of Jews settled in the empire and it was going to become Bulgaria. Additionally, some Jews of Kynasi came from ⁓ central and Eastern Europe in the 18th late 19th century. But what matters is that when Bulgaria became an independent principality, the quote unquote significant author, the symbolic enmity

was not towards the Jews. It was towards the Muslim Turkish speaking inhabitants and some Muslim who spoke Bulgarian. So the structure of the competition between the rising Bulgarian bourgeoisie that was going to govern the states, ⁓ that structure was on the one hand towards the Turks and on the other hand in part the Greeks because they were very influential in the field of trade.

So that explains why in the context of Bulgaria, the tiny Jewish community ⁓ was rather well integrated within society. ⁓ There was a binary structure of that community. On the one hand, you have a vast majority of mostly ⁓ craftsmen, small shopkeepers, rather modest, and they lived in multi-ethnic areas of large cities with some Armenians, some Roma.

diversity of inhabitants of Turks. And on the other hand, there was a tiny high bourgeoisie, mostly in Sofia, Plovdiv, also in Vetin, in Russe, Varna. And that tiny bourgeoisie was rather in the field of banks ⁓ and large merchants. They were not very visible, ⁓ not at all in the army, very, very limited presence in politics.

and a tiny presence in the field of the arts. So it's also extremely different from what you could find in Hungary or Romania. When people talk about the fact that the Bulgarians were tolerant towards the Jews, I think that the social history of the community is a very important factor. Just one more element about anti-Semitism, because it has been at the core of discussions in the past 10 years.

There were forms of traditional anti-Semitism, meaning religious based in a country that was predominantly Orthodox in Bulgaria. There were episodes of anti-Jewish violence in the late 19th century ⁓ and after the 1929 Great Depression. There was also an increase of anti-Semitism in the interwar era, like in a number of Central and South East European countries.

in part through the very deep connections between Germany and Bulgaria and the fact that a large number of students coming from good families would go and study engineering or just do their higher degrees either in Germany or in Austria. And they came back with a number of ideas that were at the time widely circulated. But despite the fact that there was some traditional and some quote unquote modern anti-Semitism in Bulgaria, here again,

It cannot compare with what was present in the case of Romania, Poland, Hungary. It remains very different. there was a degree, it's been studied of late. It is starting to be studied and there is more to be done about it. But really it was a different level.

Speaker 1 (08:27)
That's a great segue into the next question, which is what is Bulgaria's relationship with Germany in the pre-war era and then of course into the Nazi state and during World War II?

Speaker 2 (08:44)
Yes, it's a very interesting topic also because it has been controversial, but let us start with the basics. At the moment when new states were created in the last quarter of the 19th century in the Balkans, there was an attempt at determining who was going to rule which kind of kingdom there was going to be. And it so happened that in the case of Bulgaria, it was a German aristocratic family that came to power. So there was this connection with Germany that was linked to aristocratic circles.

Although it might not have been decisive, it's nonetheless a factor. During World War I, allied with Germany, ⁓ hoping to retrieve in its own definition the territories that the country had hoped to gain in 1878. And actually in March 1878, there were promises being made, in particular of acquiring Macedonia, Vardar Macedonia. And a few months later in Berlin, the Principality of Bulgaria was a tiny one and lost its perspective.

So the alliance with Germany was a very strong factor. But the thing is that Bulgaria lost the war. Germany lost the war and actually Bulgaria lost territories it hoped to gain. And the financial cost, the human cost, the number of refugees coming to the country were extremely significant. So you might have believed that this would have led to a reconsideration of the relationship to Germany. ⁓ For many reasons it did not necessarily. One of them is that Bulgaria remained a revisionist state.

it still hoped to recuperate the territories that were greater Bulgaria. ⁓ And so at the moment of considering which kind of alliances might be made, this factor was actually decisive. Who could offer Bulgaria those hopes? The second element is that Bulgaria was heavily dependent on Germany for its external trade. I think about two thirds of the external trade was between Bulgaria and Germany. So in financial terms, in economic terms, Bulgaria could not have many alternatives.

So by the time when the war started in September 1939, Bouguette tried to remain a bit neutral and try to see how things were going to evolve. And a year later, it was becoming rather clear that the Reich was pretty powerful. So Bouguette was considering the possibility of an alliance. And a few steps discussions took place in the fall of 1940. And by March 1st, 1941, Bouguette became a member of the Axis. So there was an alliance.

However, this alliance was here again a bit specific because Bulgaria did not declare war on the USSR and did not send troops to fight on the Eastern Front. For our purposes with regard to the Holocaust, it is extremely important because it means that no Bulgarian soldier took part in the Schwabai bullets, unlike what happened in the case of some Hungarians or some Romanians. So, Bulgaria tried to balance out one and the other.

The cost was nonetheless rather high because Bulgaria decided to accept to be the hinterland that allowed Germany to invade Yugoslavia and Greece in the spring of 1941. The benefit for Bulgaria was that it was entitled to occupy further Macedonia, the region of Pyrot in Serbia, and northern Greece. So an alliance, limited cost, lots of benefits, an attempt at trying to balance out

And at the same time, ⁓ a pro-German feeling that was pretty intense within society, I'm not talking about the small communist milieu and a few liberals were not, because the idea that Greater Bulgaria was finally achieved, that it was successful, that a new world was happening, was very much ingrained. And if you read the discussion in parliament, you realize that there were moments of intense hope for a new world that would be more democratic, more modern.

the German promise of a longer a greater, more powerful Germany and Bulgaria.

Speaker 1 (12:50)
And then really quickly, does, how does Bulgaria get away with not declaring war on the Soviet Union and not providing troops? ⁓ I mean, I would imagine that Nazi Germany would not look too kindly on those decisions. How did that work?

Speaker 2 (13:10)
Well, actually, was, it seems because there are still, you know, there are much debates and research has not been fully establishing all the facts. But one thing that is certain is that when the Germans reconsidered their own position because they were having losses on the Eastern France, so that's not after Stalingrad and that's in the spring of 1943, and so they're really asking. And in July 1943, what happened is that the German diverted troops to the Eastern Front.

and they asked the Bulgarians to have more military presence in Serbia and in the regions of the Balkans where the Germans wanted to be able not to have to invest that many soldiers. So the balance sheet was that you don't send troops to the Eastern Front but you guarantee a form of stability in the Balkans.

Speaker 1 (14:01)
Which then lets the Germans send their own troops to the Eastern Front. So it sort of adds more troops. Can you also for our listeners who may not be experts on Bulgaria, can you just paint a picture really quickly of the political landscape of Bulgaria? How is it governed at this time? What does it look like? And who are the key players? Because obviously this is going to become important ⁓ later on when we talk about what

Bulgaria's anti-Semitic policies are.

Speaker 2 (14:34)
Here again it's complicated. In the case of Germany, as I mentioned before, most of the debates after the war, since the end of the war, have been what was the degree of alliance, asymmetry, pressure, was there much of any choice? And that question has always been linked to how was Bulgaria governed. Bulgaria was governed by King Sartor Boris III.

and it was therefore a kingdom which had become what is usually called a personal regime, that is an authoritarian regime governed by the king, with the support of the army and the symbolic support of the Orthodox Church. By 1935, after a cool temp of May 1934, the king had decided to dissolve the political parties, so they officially did not exist anymore, although all the inhabitants knew

who was what and where they belonged. And so there was ⁓ an elections in parliament that were conducted under let's say authoritarian conditions, but nonetheless with the diversity of party being represented. And in the elections that took place at the start of the war, there were a few communist deputies, then the vast majority was pro-government. And then there were a few members of the opposition, some of them being liberal, few being social democrats.

⁓ But then the King was not satisfied with that, so there were no elections and the control over the parliament was even stronger. So you're talking about a situation in which, let's say, nearly two-thirds of the parliament was pro-government, so obeying the decisions of the government. ⁓ At the level of the municipalities and the district municipalities, actually the mayors were appointed, much more than elected.

And so they were also very much in line with the dominant power and they were obeying orders, although some of them had had a previous political career and some of them had experience in ruling over municipalities. So it was not, it was not a legionnaire, it was not as harsh as many dictatorship in Europe at the time, but nonetheless, it was not a democracy. So that leads to of course the next implicit question, who could make

important decisions and that's where people disagree. Was it the government at the time the prime minister was a pro-German ⁓ Bogdan Filov until the fall of 1943 or was it the king or was it the king using Bogdan Filov what was exactly the balance of power or was it the entourage of people who were advisors to the king and having some influence upon his decision-making process or final option?

Was it Germany exerting pressure? But for what is the domestic situation? Obviously, it was an interplay between the king, the government and a rather obedient parliament. With nonetheless some individual capacities, among those were the most famous parliamentarians who had been very visible over the past 20 to 30 years to just have their access to the king and to try to negotiate and discuss a few decisions.

Speaker 1 (17:50)
Yeah, this is a really good segue because we have the comparison with Hungary, with Romania, which has sort of different levels of interaction ⁓ between the leadership, if you will, and the government and policies and these kind of things. ⁓ So maybe if we start to look at anti-Semitic policy, what is Bulgaria actually doing and when? And of course,

With that, I'm going to lay out for our listeners, similar to Hungary, similar to Romania, I think a distinction always needs to be made between sort of pre-war boundaries of the country ⁓ in the context of Bulgaria. I think you'd call that the Old Kingdom. And then these new territories, because every one of these sort of three collaborator countries with the Nazis gains territory as a result of its

Alliance. And actually each of them treats the Jewish populations differently in those new territories than they do predominantly in their, in their own territory. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, when does the antisemitism and antisemitic policy in Bulgaria sort of shift from what you described at the beginning, this sort of traditional conservative antisemitism?

to something more closely approximating what the Nazis are doing. And then of course, differentiating between the two different spaces in which this is taking place.

Speaker 2 (19:30)
It's here in very complex because actually a number of scholars would argue that the final point of the anti-Semitic program of the government was similar for Jews in Bulgaria and Jews in the occupied territories. So before we get to this position, let's try to start from the beginnings. In the fall of 1940, so prior to the moment when Bulgaria took on the Axis, the government proposed a new law.

the law for the defense of the nation, which was supposed to be against the diversity of groups, ⁓ including the Freemasons, but that included the Jews. That law was actually debated in Parliament. It was made public, ⁓ and so it was passed in December 1940. It was signed by the King, and it entered into force in January 1941. It's important to remember that timing, because it's prior to the Alliance.

Some scholars argued that it was in order to obtain the support from Nazi Germany and to find some kind of, it was a very competitive environment. He needed to prove that he were better than the Romanians and the other potential collaborative states. Others insist that there were a number of people, including the prime minister and his consult, who was Alexander Belov, and who was later to become the commissioner on judicial affairs, who were anti-Semitic and absolutely happy at the idea that they should be this kind of law.

The law was very much discussed and was also opposed by a diversity of members of parliament, professional unions, average individuals, people with limited ability to write. And it's usually quite fascinating when you're reading the archives and you see the letters being sent by average individuals who make grammar mistakes, who don't really know how to write well and send to the parliament or send to the government or send to the king and say, but...

We can do that, we cannot hurt our fellow citizens, this is impossible. And this is the point that has been emphasized a lot in the organic public discourse. And that segment is true. There were elements of opposition. We need nonetheless to nuance a little bit this element. First, there were also professional unions that were in favor of the law.

⁓ unions of merchants, reserve offices, members of the radical antisemitic and xenophobic organizations like the Arapacy, some student organizations. So there were some segments of society that supported what others opposed. The second element is that it was public and it's very important because later on most of the decisions were not passed in parliament, they were adopted as decrees.

And so there was much less position to delay the decisions that when it was made public. With regard to the content of the law, the law was actually covering most of the fields that you have in other European countries. So you had civic for business to be involved in engaging politics and in a number of professions. You had quotas for certain professions. You had the obligation to register your properties. Later on, will be fiscal laws that will actually

take away 20 to 25 percent of the patrimony of the Jews. There was step-by-step creation and organization of properties. mean, the whole ranch started from the law, which was the core, which was the defining component, and then with different types of directives and decrees, they were much harsher. And then a second very important moment, actually this is the turning point, is the moment when in

June 1942, the parliament decided to grant all powers to the executive powers to make any decision regarding the Jewish question. So the parliament was out of the picture, which meant that in the summer of 1942, the prime minister ⁓ prepared together with Alexander Belov and other people what was going to become the decree of August 26, 1942.

which was going to make it possible to create an exceptional structure, ad hoc, the Commissioner for Jewish Affairs that was engaged with centralizing all anti-Jewish policies, expanding them, dividing them, and actually preparing for the deportation of the Jews. The Commissioner for Jewish Affairs was headed by Alexander Belloff, who was highly anti-Semitic and had gone on specialization in Germany.

And it grew over the course of time, but within a matter of a few months, it had reached about 100 people, and it was coordinating all the different possible policies. What is also extremely important is that in the decree, it was clearly stated in two articles that the purpose of the anti-Jewish policy was ultimately the expulsion

either within the territory of the Old Kingdom or beyond, that was not very clear, but nonetheless the expulsion of the Jews. At the time, there was no distinction being made between the different categories of Jews living in Bulgaria. And to go back to what you mentioned regarding the potential differences between the Jews in the Old Kingdom and the Jews in the occupied territories. Bulgaria occupied segments of former Yugoslavia and former Greece in late April 1941.

From that moment onwards, let's say from May onwards, the anti-Jewish legislation that was applied in the Old Kingdom was entirely transferred to the New Territories. So it was the same kind of legislation. It was, to some extent, more brutal because those were occupied territories and some local officials from Bulgaria had been dispatched to govern those territories. There were forms of resistance and opposition, notably in Northern Greece, but also

with the structuring step by step of resistance in former Yugoslavia. So it was more brutal. The logic was the same. But what happened is that in the fall of 1942, when Bulgaria accepted the idea that there might be deportation of Jews from the country, somehow there was the idea that not all Jews should be deported and that the Jews who own Bulgarian citizenship

Some of them had to be kept because it might be useful for forced labor and also because ⁓ somehow they were a bit different. They had the protection of citizenship. In June 1942, the government had passed a decree that did not give, again, citizenship to the Jews in the occupied territories. It gave citizenship to the Slavic members of ⁓ the former Yugoslav state, for instance, but not to the Jews.

And as you know, throughout Europe, having or not having national citizenship made a difference. And so the fact that did not give citizenship, and that was a decision from June 1942, suggested that there might be, know, bifurcation of the faiths of different categories of Jews. Nonetheless, ⁓ whether the Jews who had Bulgarian citizenship were to be deported or not remained quite uncertain.

until March 1943 and even a bit later, but at least until March and I suppose we'll be talking about that more in detail in a few minutes.

Speaker 1 (27:12)
Yeah, I mean, and one of questions then that sort of I think follows on with this is, I guess it's two questions. One is what is the Nazi role in this? You know, are they encouraging? Are they cajoling? Are they, you know, trying to force Bulgaria to sort of hand over its Jews? Number one. And number two, you know, when we talk about deporting, obviously by June 1942, the extermination centers

Operation Reinhard camps are in action. are they are masking the mass murder of Jews has begun do the authorities in Bulgaria know what deportation means? You know that the deportation is not is no longer for example what it was for the Nazis You know before 1940 42 when it was kind of get them out of Germany and put them someplace else now It's actually deportation equals murder

Speaker 2 (28:09)
To address these two questions we need three segments of responses with regard to German pressure. People who argue that there was little German pressure or little need for German pressure refer to a visit by Ivan Popov, was then Minister of Foreign Affairs to Germany in the fall of 1941.

He had discussion with Sponor Urban Drop and he complained at the time it was difficult to implement anti-Jewish legislations towards foreign Jews, meaning Jews coming from Central Europe or other countries. And it would be much easier if there were a common general policy being applied to all Jews. So they insist on the fact that this actually bears testimony to the attempts on the part of the Bulgarians to have an overall policy against Jews.

⁓ If we turn to 1942, and I think maybe that is a more important moment, we see an evolution with this granting of powers to the executives. And really in the summer 1942, there are elements suggesting that Bulgaria is moving towards the idea of deputation, including of Bulgarian Jews. One episode, which is of import, is that the Germans wanted and they got a verbal note.

to know what to do with Bovian Jewish citizens who lived in territories controlled by the Rakh, including Bohemia and Moravia. And by verbal note, they received the answer, which is, I know you may apply all policies to them. So all your policies to them, including being sent to the East. So by the summer of 1942, at least some segments of the government were in agreement with the fact that it might be applied.

⁓ By the fall of 1942 also, the delay in determining the date regarding when the preparations for deportation might take place seems to have been in part due to intra-German contention between the central office, between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and there was some disagreement with regard to the availability of trains, the harvest should all be organized. So there was a one month and a half

delay in the fall of 1942, ⁓ which might have been caused by internal German dynamics, much more than Burgen opposition, which does not mean that they were not segments of Burgen society or Burgen elites that were not being worried about what was upcoming. ⁓ And this does not mean that there were no German pressure whatsoever. There was a German vision of Europe, which was supposed to be Jewish free.

⁓ So there were German discussions ⁓ channeling through the initial affairs to the Burgen-Mistrachuan affairs because it was an alliance, was not an occupied territory. And there were also discussions going through the ambassador, so it was the Minister of the Ligna-Penina Potentiary, Bécaulé, that was located in Sofia, and the government having interactions with the Commissariat of Jewish Affairs. So there were multiple channels through which

There were attempts on the part of the Germans to convince the Bulgarians to accept the idea of deportation. The Bulgarians said yes, but we do need some advice. So it was determined that they would receive an advisor. The advisor was Danekar. And Danekar, as you know, was famous for his political efficient role in the deportation of French Jews. He was dispatched to Bulgaria on January 21, 1943.

and an agreement was signed about the deportation of 20,000 Jews in February, on February 22, 1943. So if you follow the entire sequence I've been describing, you either have one year, one year and a few months, or eight to nine months. You have a situation in which some actors in the rear do wish to go along with deportation. That includes the commissioner on Jewish affairs and the prime minister.

And you do have situations in which negotiations are taking place and the course of the war is impacting the way in which Bulgaria is reacting to the German, let's say, demand. The question is rather what would have happened had Bulgaria refused? And in the fall of 1942, the idea that the Bulgarians were going to go along with it was they often asked, what about the Romanians? What are they doing here? What about Hungarians? And they kept on comparing.

the policies of the other, they would have preferred everything to take place at the same time. And then later on it turned out that the Romanians refused, the Haganians for that moment refused to, and the Burghans went alongside the idea. So it was acceptance, collaboration, and pressure. The moment when this was best documented was at the time of the Beccolet trial that took place in the land of Hesse.

⁓ in Germany in 1967 and 68. And they were trying to assess the responsibility ⁓ of the former diplomat based in Sofia. And for that purpose, they needed to know who was responsible for what. So they had to be able to determine whether it was a German initiative or a Bulgarian initiative. And when you read the archives of the trial, well, it's quite complicated because they do have elements showing that it's actually those sites that took part in it.

You'll ask me a second question.

Speaker 1 (33:42)
I mean, I guess it sort of follows, which is, you know, how much knowledge do Bulgarian authorities have of what it means to deport their Jews, you know, in conjunction with the Nazis?

Speaker 2 (33:56)
That's also a very important question. At the time of the Becquelet trial, actually one of the issues for the prosecutors in Germany was how much do people know? And they wanted to make sure that a person like Becquelet knew where people were being sent. And for that purpose, they had to collect lots of information regarding the context of Blugherre and Sophia in the spring of 1943. And their conclusion was that it was nearly impossible not to know by the spring of 1943

in the elite circles, I'm not talking about average citizens, that at least the Jews being deported would never return. How exactly they vanished from the map might not have been fully asserted, but that was ⁓ known. And there were some attempts at trying to convince the government not to ⁓ go along with the idea of deportation, so there were international visits. And among those international visits, there was a representative from Switzerland

that came and had a discussion and argued that they are going to be sent to death. And the response was, this is the war. So the dominant view nowadays is that in the spring of 1943, both on the side of the Burgen ruling elites and on the side of the segment of the Jewish elite in Sofia or in the larger cities, there was a deep belief

that deportation met no return. Among those who were arrested in March 1943, some hoped that actually they would be sent from Ebus Velidon, Greece to the hinterland, so to the Old Kingdom, or some believed that they might have some form of a job, even forced labor, being sent to the Eastern territories. But not even all of them. In the trials that took place after the end of World War II in Bulgaria,

When people were asked about what they felt, what they knew, when they were in the internal camps before deportation, the few who were talking about it that actually were not deported because they were not gay citizens, they said that everybody tried to reassure them by saying, ⁓ it's going to be alright, you will be simply sent, nothing else will happen to you. And that there was much disbelief among the detainees. So it was becoming clear that there may never be any return.

Speaker 1 (36:24)
And so I guess then then that brings us to this to this 20,000 because they are mostly or almost all from Thrace and Macedonia. Right. And these are the ones that the Jews that are murdered and not just an extermination centers, but many of them die in route in the trains and these kind of things. Can you tell us a little bit about about that particular deportation moment? ⁓

And why those and not ⁓ Jews from Bulgaria proper?

Speaker 2 (37:00)
Yes, so the agreement that was signed on February 22, 1943 was about 20,000 Jews. But at the moment, when Danekker and Belep signed that agreement, they knew pretty well that in the Al-Qaeda territories, there were not 20,000 Jews. There were, they thought, between 12,000, 13,000, but no war. So they actually wrote that having at the back of their mind that about 7,800 Jews

thousand Mughan Jews might be deported alongside this first series of deportations, hoping that it would follow suit and then the rest of the Mughan Jews would be deported. It so happened that there were lots of mobilizations in March 1943, plus changing the course of the war and that ultimately names have been drawn, a list of names of 8,500 Jews and the first arrests have taken place but finally the Mughan Jews were not deported.

So let us focus on those who were deported. It was a very rapid process. Denneker arrived on January 21. There were plenty of discussions. Lots of archives are available. It's extremely well documented. By February 4, Belov was sending a very detailed project to the Minister of the Interior, Petr Gavrovsky, who was a very strongly anti-Semitic and former leader of the Ratnik xenophobic anti-Semitic movement and very close to Belov.

explaining how it should be done. And ⁓ there were some directives being sent very discreetly to key figures in the occupied territories. And there were also some visits, some tours organized by selected members of the Primizat for Jewish Affairs to talk to the regional delegates on Jewish Affairs, people who were the head of garrisons, the head of the police, the security police, the local district governors. And so that took place in the second half

of February 1943. By early March, the deportation started. So they started with Northern Greece on March 4. They continued with Vardar, Macedonia. Vardar, Macedonia, as you know, was occupied mostly by Bulgaria, but the Western part of it was occupied by the Italians. So that was a different fate. Plus the region of Pirog in Serbia proper. And there the deportation took place.

Barla Macedonia denied to do tends to the 11th and Piotr was one day later. What had been organized and it's a slightly complex set of organization that had to do with the practicalities of what the Germans could afford and propose in terms of transport techniques. So in the case of Northern Greece, the Jews were arrested, they were ragged up, they were being sentenced to temporary detention camps.

Oftentimes those were tobacco warehouses because that was spring. Tobacco was not ready yet. They were available. They were very large premises. So they stayed there in horrendous conditions, oftentimes with no water, no food, from two to five days, depending on people. Then they were taken by train. Then it was a very complex system because the train lines between Greece and Bulgaria, there was narrow gauge and then there were

They had to be shifted, they had to wait in the courts, some people died, it really a process. And then they were sent to two intern camps in Bodhiere proper, the Old Kingdom. One was in what was called at the time, Gohein Du Maya, the Gohein Grat, and the other one was in Dupitza. And then they were taken to the harbor of Lombe on the Danube to be deported by boat.

So it's a bit different from what we're used to when we're talking about trains only and the boat took them to Vienna and from Vienna they were taken by trains. In the case of Garda Macedonia, what happened is that initially we have been attempting devising multiple internal camps and then finally it was decided that to regroup everybody in one would be best and that took place in a tobacco warehouse that was located in Skopje.

And there were many advantages, quote unquote, in terms of the organization of deportation from the standpoint of the Burgen authorities is that it was a bit away from the center and very close to a training line. So that's why actually some of those who were detainees saw other trains pass by with people speaking Ladino and crying and having no food and understood what was going to happen to them. And from Skopje, they were deported by train. So what you have, because I guess this is the implicit question, who did it?

and for example their responsibilities on the part of the Brains and Germans. Well, it was massively done by the Bouguères ⁓ in the case of the arrest, in the case of the internment camps, in the case of the ruling over the internment camps and all the transit that took place at least within the territory of Bouguères up to Long. Then from that moment onwards, there were also presence of the Germans supervising the situation and from Vienna on they took control.

In the case of Skopje, there were three series of departures and there was a presence of German soldiers and there was German surveillance to different degrees depending on which one of those trains you're talking about. But the arrests were definitely planned by the Bulgarians with assistance from Danaka and they were enforced by the Bulgarians. And this has been actually one of the issues with regard to understanding responsibility.

ways I've argued that it was Dan Ecker or Dan Ecker and Bella, but not the whole series of social actors you need to be able to put that into place because you also need to get the harbor and get the warehouses, get the food, get the transport. So of course the train companies were involved. It's a diversity of actors. It's a very wide diversity of actors. And because there was a liquidation of Jewish properties after they were sent away forever,

⁓ This also included a number of people in charge of assessing the value of Jewish earnings. This included the members of the central bank or different banks. So it was quite a wide range of actors that were involved. There were not all legal grants. The grant grants to ⁓ large segments of the civil servants were involved in the process.

Speaker 1 (43:37)
And of course, it bears mentioning as sort of a coda on this, that the deportations from Vienna end up in Treblinka. And so this is where sort of the mass murder of Bulgarian Jews takes place. You've been very kind to give us an excellent background and introduction to the history of the Holocaust in Bulgaria. And so I want to move into sort of what's sort of the

the emphasis of your work and your book, which is sort of the memory of this. And it begins really with right where we left off with this kind of this idea of resistance because the Bulgaria and I'm also, I guess, somewhat guilty of this in comparison to Romania and ⁓ Hungary, but then also other places that are

that are either complicit with the Nazis or collaborating with the Nazis, you know, has this reputation, this conventional wisdom, this depiction of it as a reluctant partner of a place that is actually characterized by saving the rescue of lots of Jews. And one of the things that you do really well in your book is sort of problematize that and sort of suggest that this is a narrative.

that is being ⁓ used by different groups at different times for different reasons. And so as we get into that discussion, perhaps you can talk really quickly about what is the resistance to the policies that are taking place as best you understand it.

Speaker 2 (45:22)
Yes, there are two important moments for us. One of them is the one I already mentioned in the fall of 1940. So there is not much to add to it. There were different segments of society that did protest at a moment when there was still some form of public debate against the adoption of the lawful protection of the defense of the nation. ⁓ Later on, when there were those fiscal policies which needed taking away of Jewish properties and shops and businesses.

There was also people becoming accustomed to the fact that the Jews would have some form of, you being excluded from society. Anti-Semitism was a dominant speech. Although there were not massive documentaries filming shot like you might have found them in the Reich, the war went on and anti-Semitism or anti-Jewish attitudes became more visible. But nonetheless, by February,

1943, when there were some rumors regarding the possibility that Jews might be deported, then a number of people tried to get organized in order to impact the decision-making process. Here, the problem is not to say that they were not intense on the part of individuals, some of them being members of the majority ⁓ in parliament, some of them being in the EU.

opposition, some of them being ⁓ influential lawyers, diversity factors, did try to oppose deportation of the Bulgarian Jews. I'm not talking about Jews from the occupied territories. That did exist. The problem is to actually turn that into the dominant history and to forget that to say the Jews were saved or rescued ⁓ misses entirely the fact that the Jews fought for their own survival.

because there would have been no mobilization on the part of Bulgarians had not Jews come to know about what was impending and turn to some friends in Bulgarian majority society to ask them to do something about it. So what you do have at best minimum that should be actually reformulated in the narrative is that some Jews that came to hear about what was ⁓ coming.

⁓ went alongside some Bulgarian non-Jews who tried to convince the government and the king not to deport Bulgarian Jews. And there was a second element linked to this rescue or savior vision, apart from the notion that the Jews were passive, that they were rescued, passive force, is that there is the idea that they have no agency and that they should be grateful.

So the topic of gratefulness, you should be grateful forever and being grateful means just don't mention the other segments of anti-Jewish policies. Don't mention forced labor. Don't mention the ironization of properties. Don't mention being moved away from your home to be in specific quarters of different cities. Don't mention the expansion from Sofia in May 1943. So you're talking about quite a number of elements that were not discussed.

because of the creation of this dominant view. Then there is a third moment. I mentioned the fall of 1940, March 1943. Then there is May 1943. Belew, when he failed to deport Pergene Jews, initially the Commissioner for Jewish Affairs thought that he might actually resign. His resignation was not accepted. So he decided to prepare another plan for deportation.

And the plan would foresee that the Jews would be actually taken away from larger cities, in particular Sofia. They would be dispatched to different places, rather in the northern part of Bulgaria, not too far away from the Danube. And then later on, might be easier to just bring them together and to have them deported without having to face the tensions and the pressures that they had seen in Sofia in March 1943. And so by late May,

it was determined that the 25,000 Jews living in Sofia would be expelled into the provinces. As a matter of fact, a number of them were no longer in Sofia because they were away as forced laborers. So it's about 19,000 that were actually were dispatched to the provinces. But it did not remain without any response. And there were reactions in particular on the part of Jews in Sofia who got together

and who tried to actually organize a definitely in a protest, they still believed that the king might be helping them. So they tried to leave the Jewish area, moving away from the synagogue and walking towards the residency of the king. They did not manage to reach that residency. They were brutally arrested by the police and a number of the elites of the community were sent to the concentration camp of some of it. But there was this third moment.

which was very much initiated by Jews themselves who opposed their future destiny. In later speech and later discourse, step by step there has been an insistence on the fact that it was Jews, communist Jews, communist non-Jews, well, Bulgarian communists, and step by step the role of the Jews just diminished. The thing is that we do lack visual archives regarding that movement and there have been lots of testimonies.

But the Prince document, apart from those regarding the people who were interned in camps, the very dynamic of how this was organized, has been at the core of a very bitter contention between Bulgarian non-Jews and Jews and within members of the Jewish community. But nonetheless, there were at least those three moments of resistance. And let me add a fourth tiny element. It's not that tiny for those who do part in this, by 1943, 1944,

partisan movements started crystallizing in Bulgaria and a significant number of Jews joined that movement in part to oppose anti-Trich policies and because they got into the anti-fascist front, some of them were left-wingers in terms of police, others were simply trying to oppose what was seen as a pro-Nazi regime and so they were involved in this forced aspect of resistance against

the war, the pronouncing regime and the whole.

Speaker 1 (51:48)
Yeah, I mean, this is amazing too, because it went one of the things that runs through the whole book that I think is really fascinating is the way that this is a sort of foundational myth that runs through a bunch of different attempts by Bulgaria over the years to come to terms with its past, right? To come to terms with

with exactly what we talked about when you're talking about ⁓ what did Bulgaria do. ⁓ And I guess that one of the first examples of this in the immediate post-war period, you move into the post-war period, ⁓ trials or attempts at post-war justice in a now communist ⁓ Bulgaria, which

brings with it all kinds of challenges, both related to and unrelated to the Holocaust. And so perhaps you can talk a little bit about the attempts legally ⁓ and I guess success, failure, whatever of those attempts to begin to wrap their heads around Bulgarian complicity in the Holocaust. And then, of course, how does this contribute to, again, this sort of not myth of rescue, but this narrative

that prioritizes an idea of rescue over complicity.

Speaker 2 (53:16)
Yes, it's a totally fascinating moment in all respects because we're talking about the overthrow of the regime on September 9, 1944, with the strong assistance of the Red Army that invaded or liberated, depending on your view, Bulgaria at the time. And so a coalition was created. It was not yet a communist state. It was a people's front with a dominant president of the communists. And one of the first decisions was to create a people's court.

⁓ which has been predominantly understood in mainstream historiography as ⁓ a communist repression over the bourgeois elite. And the people's court, especially Chamber 1 and 2, up until today are perceived as having been entirely masterminded from Moscow by Stalin and Georgy Dmitrov, who was known from the life-saving trial and was again leader of the Communist Party in exile.

and having been forced to no confessions and destruction and the immediate actually killing of those who had been condemned on February 1st, 1945. So there were deputies, there were ministers. And because of this image of brutal repression, few people have paid attention to another chamber that was actually different from chamber one and two of the people's courts, chamber seven. That was the first specialized

chamber exclusively dedicated to the prosecution of anti-Jewish crimes. And it's absolutely fascinating because you're talking about a country that deported some Jews but did not deport others and did not take part in the Shlom by bullet and did not have extermination on its own territory. And that's precisely the country that wants to investigate what happened.

to the brother Jews, they used an image of brotherhood at the time from Yugoslavia, from Greece, and try to document it. So the fact that this happened should be known. It's extremely important in writing the history of trials for war crimes and anti-Semitic prosecutions. But then you get to the second moment. Second moment is that those who try to investigate the crimes, there were four prosecutors.

They don't have much means actually to do that, they have to be done really fast. They did manage to find very important archives, in particular from the Commissioner of Long-Distance Affairs. They did manage to have some witness testimonies, extremely important witness testimonies regarding some doctors and physicians and pharmacists who actually had survived because they were freed before deportation and that came to testify or that provided written document.

They also had some written documents from Skopje, or people who had survived from the Monopole warehouses. So it was a moment when data was collected, it was made visible, it did exist, and that happened. That's the second extremely important part. Then come the bad news. The bad news is that it may have been quite difficult to obtain permission to create this chamber.

At that time, were rather few Jews holding high positions within the Bulgarian Communist Party. And what had happened to the Jews was maybe not a priority for the party. The priority for the party was actually to win the war on the other side. It was also not to lose the territories that they had occupied, they were going to lose, having something that would be in favor of the Jews, quote unquote, might have been positive with regard to peace treaties. But nonetheless, it was not a priority. What was the priority?

was preparing the elections that were supposed to be taking place in August 1945 and finally took place in the fall of and was to make sure that there would be support for the People's Front and for the Communists in particular, and therefore not to ostracize too much of the inhabitants, including those who had benefited from the ionization of Jewish properties or from housing. So the idea was that maybe Chamber 1 and 2 had been extremely brutal and bloody in their decisions,

Chapter 7 was supposed to be quiet and kind. So the result of all that had been accumulated was actually ⁓ extremely lenient sentences. And those sentences were only death penalties for people who were already dead. And the numbers of those who were accused and who still tried was very, limited. And large segments of, let's say, of the army who were involved were not accused. ⁓ Large segments of different professions, including the national bank, were not accused.

So we have this environment that limits the possibility of talking about success. And then the fourth element, which is the one that led to this major narrative being built, is that the Jews who took part in the trial were trying to achieve a form of legitimacy. And they also hoped to be able to build a future socialist Bulgaria in which everybody would be living on par. And so they...

created a discourse, most probably in discussion with a non-Jewish communist comrades, that the Jews suffered, but they had suffered as the non-Jews had on par or even possibly less. ⁓ And that finally, it was a common fate. ⁓ And in that common fate, most Bulgarians had been extremely good to the Jews. There was no anti-Semitism for the most part.

There have been rescue attempts, unsuccessful rescue, and those who were responsible were tiny, tiny clique. So they call it a fascist clique. And most of them have been judged in January. So ministers, advisors to the regents, parliamentarians to the king, and those who were judged were members of the Commissar for Jewish Affairs to some extent. They were just a small number. So the overall ending point of this very important trial

was the dominant theme according to which the Burkina Jews had been rescued. They should be grateful for what had been done. And it was from now on possible to live together happily and build socialism.

Speaker 1 (59:31)
That's really great summary of a really complex history. How does this change?

after the fall of communism or even, or even are there, are there moments during, cause communism is a long, the Soviet, the Soviet period, I suppose, or the communist period is a long period of history. Are there, are there moments that you would highlight between 45 and I guess 89 or so that, that are important. And then of course, what happens, what happens to sort of the confrontation with this history ⁓ in the, in the post ⁓

post-Soviet period.

Speaker 2 (1:00:12)
Well, there are two moments that are really important. The first one is the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 because of a large segment of the Bagan Jewish community left. About only 9,000 Jews remained in Bulgaria. So the majority had settled. And that led to extremely intense controversies between the communist Jews who had remained in Bulgaria and the Jews who had settled in Israel. And that had an impact on the interpretation of World War II.

In part because of the impact on the interpretation of communism, in part because those who had settled in Israel were anti-communist, ⁓ then they reread what had happened before communism came to power. And so that led to a very complex set of extremely politicized and very, very painful divisions, at times with members of a similar family. The second element is that from 1960s onwards, so after the Archman trial, a bit before in some cases, but

From the 1960s onwards, when quite a number of trials took place in West Germany, some were attempted in East Germany, Poland did provide some support and even the USSR to some of the trials that took place in the West and to make sure that some of those who were responsible for anti-Jewish persecution were going to be actually sentenced and condemned. There was great interest in that. There was a massive interest, of course, in the Jewish community when the Akhman trial took place.

in Israel. if you start from the late 1950s up until the early 1970s, there is a degree of awareness, degree of sensitivity of this topic, but in public it could not really be talked about. Nonetheless, there is an exhibition organized at the Jewish Bottle House. It's a permanent exhibition, but it's a tiny set of events. This is going to change in the 1970s mostly because the regime of Tabor Shevkal

which is losing its legitimacy, meaning the kind of legitimacy based on the hope of a beautiful, brilliant, shining communist future, ⁓ is being replaced by pride in Bulgaria's past and greatness. And this rediscovery of pride, national pride, and the national pride of national tolerance has an impact on the ways of representing the Holocaust. And this will coincide with the ⁓

the serious Holocaust in the United States and ever greater interest in what has happened with regards to the Holocaust throughout the world, in Europe, in the United States. So somehow this gives the opportunity to the Bulgarians to say, well, ⁓ maybe we're communist and proceed as very close to the Soviet Union, but we did not report our views. So the speech is becoming intensified. There have been a few decades of relative silence. It becomes more visible.

That's the first element of that segment, 1970s, 1980s. But the second element is that Todor Zhivkov himself wants to be involved in the rescue. So there will be a stress placed on the May 1943 demonstration that I told you about. And Zhivkov being a member of the instructors of the Communist Party in Sofia, he's trying to have his name just somehow put inside those who are the rescuers. So you have a new vision that is totally focused on the rescue plus the communist

plus the Lord Zhivkov and a part of that was this notion of gratitude and the partisan movement. So the obsession with the partisan movement as being the only sector of society that opposed ⁓ anti-Greech policies is leaving aside people who are not in the partisan movement or who had started opposing before that and is creating a very skewed vision. So that's what happened after, before 1989. After 1989,

It was quite surprising because initially ⁓ there was a swap. The communist party that had insisted on the rescue, started insisting on violence. Why? Because there was an opposition between the communist and the anti-communist. The anti-communist were very much in favor of rehabilitating the interwar era and the king, which meant to some extent what had happened during World War II, while the communist, the former communist,

renamed socialist, wanted to show that if they had come to power it was because there was fascism. So if there was fascism it meant that there had been extremely stringent policies towards the communists and towards the Jews. But that was for a few years. After that moment, here again it became less visible, and by the year 2000, somehow in a very surprising way,

⁓ when Bulgaria was negotiating access to the EU and when the dividing line between those that have been called the Red and the Blues, the ex-Communist and the anti-Communist started losing in salience and did not help understand the political scale and the regime, ⁓ the consensus was a nationalistic one. So you had some resolutions in parliament or some ways of speaking that would add to good people.

So amongst the good people, had members of the church, had members of the bourgeoisie, you had members of the communists. Just, know, when you don't agree, you simply add the list of the rescuers. And that became the nationalistic consensus that actually has become predominant up until today with a few variations in the stress on who really is to be perceived as the true rescuer of the Jews. The latest version being that the king should be perceived as a key actor.

This vision was promoted in 2023, at the time when there was the 80th anniversary of the events of March 1943.

Speaker 1 (1:05:55)
Well, thank you so much for this because this is a really, there's a lot, but it's a really, really great introduction to a really complex history. ⁓ and, of course, before we let you go, I want to ask you, ⁓ our question we ask everybody, which is what is one book on the Holocaust that you would recommend, ⁓ for our readers? It's been influential to you or that you think is important.

Speaker 2 (1:06:18)
There is actually one book that struck me and that remains by my side ⁓ every day and that I've read a number of times that I think is extremely important. It's Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death by Otto Dorfkirche. It was published in 2013, translated into 20 to 30 languages. Otto Dorfkirche was 11 when he was deported initially to Dresdenstadt and then to the family camp in Auschwitz. ⁓ He survived. He settled in Israel.

became a historian, who for the most part on the ascent to power of Hitler did not say he was an intern ⁓ in the Auschwitz and ⁓ refrained for the most part from writing about that. Up until the moment when in 1984, he wrote ⁓ one chapter in a book in which he talked about these events, but he never said I. He used archival material. He believed that he needed objectivity, distance.

and that he would not put himself in it, even when the archives were actually not fitting what he had experienced. He just used the historiography, the kind of question you may ask as a historian, the sources that you may cite, what is legitimate in that film. But in the meantime, he was haunted by what he had lived. And he had started recording elements of memories, nightmares, imagination, and thinking. He was a historian trying to understand what the child had lived.

He was a person who was later trying to revert to that past. And so ultimately, although this was not intended to be published, part of those recordings, so they have a reality of them, were turned into a book. And the 1984 chapter I told you about was added as an appendix. And when you read the book, it's not only one of the most brilliant attempt I've ever seen at understanding the unfathomable using all the tools you have.

which means your skills as historians, but also your abilities as a human being. And at the same time, one of the most important pieces to try to wonder, how do we ever combine what is what we have on paper, which at times is true, at times is incomplete, at times might have actually been faked. And what you remember, which itself has been transformed over the course of time, may be incomplete too. How do you manage to bring them together? Is it possible? And if you do not manage.

Can you let them coexist one next to the other in order to have a more complete vision of what the past was?

Speaker 1 (1:08:51)
That's amazing. And that sounds fascinating. And I'm definitely going to put that on our show notes. For everybody else, again, thank you for listening. Please take a moment, give us a rating, send a message, leave a comment, all those things, like and subscribe, et cetera. And once again, Nadesh, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (1:09:12)
very much.