Tosho Donchev - A Report on the Banality of Integrity

Tosho Donchev
A Report on the Banality of Integrity

An effort to explain a unique Bulgarian conduct
in the midst of the Holocaust

Napkt Publishers
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Translated by Patricia Austin
Proofread by John Barefield

Copy editor: Bence Szondi

On the cover: Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
(photo: Bahget Iskander)

Tosho Donchev, 2020
Bahget Iskander (cover photo), 2020
Napkt Publishers, 2020

ISBN 978 963 263 915 4

Special thanks to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)
for their support in publishing this study.

Back in March of 2015, as part of the usual March 15 Hungarian diplomatic road show (connected to Hungarys commemoration of its 1848 War of Independence), I was travelling from the city of Vidin to the smaller town of Chiprovtsi together with Toso Doncsev, who was director of the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Sofia. We were on a wreath-laying mission; planning to lay a wreath at a statue of Colonel Stefan (Istvn) Dunjov (Dunyov), a Bulgarian soldier from the Banat region who served in Hungary in Lajos Kossuths 1848 military. We were early, so we stopped for a cup of coffee in Belogradchik, which is at the foothills of the Balkan Mountains near the Serbian border. Thats when our conversation shifted to 19431944 and the story of the Jews of Bulgaria. This was the first time I heard Doncsevs thoughts on the matter. I remember saying one thing: It would be really good if you wrote all this down. Luckily, with support from the Hungarian chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA), he has written it down, for which special thanks is due to state secretary Szabolcs Takcs and deputy state secretary Vince Szalay-Bobrovniczky.

The events of the time are general knowledge in Bulgaria and among experts in the field. However, Bulgaria tends to be traditionally weak in advocating its own interests, so it is pretty much unknown to the public at large, in contrast with, for instance, events in Denmark or even the story of Oskar Schindler. For this reason Id like to very briefly run through the events in chronological order.

First Id like to clarify that rescuing Jews in Bulgaria refers to the fact that during World War II in a Bulgaria allied with Nazi Germany there were two occasions when the nearly 50,000 Bulgarian-citizen Jews averted deportation at the last minute in a near-miraculous way. The outcome was that Bulgaria became the only European country whose Jewish population was larger at the end of the war than at the beginning. But I need to underscore that the story is limited exclusively to Jews who were Bulgarian citizens, because the other part of this history is of Macedonia, and Trakya (Thrace), in the Aegean Sea. These regions were turned over to Bulgaria administratively but not annexed, and with the aid of the Bulgarian authorities the nearly 12,000 Jews who lacked Bulgarian citizenship were deported in 1943. Since this occurred in an early stage of the Holocaust, hardly anyone survived. The Bulgarian historians and the countrys official policy deserve kudos in accepting responsibility for the events in the territories they were occupying militarily, and today, in 2015 they are increasingly sincere in facing up to their actions. Indirectly, this makes the actions of the heroes in Old Bulgaria, in other words, present-day Bulgaria, which rescued the Jews, even more praiseworthy.

On the eve of World War II, after a measure of hesitation, Bulgaria chose to ally itself with Hitlers Germany. This was the logical outcome of their demand to revise European borders after what Bulgarians considered unfair peace terms ending World War I. Another fact that must not be forgotten is that Bulgaria at the time was a predominantly agrarian country, and 80 percent of its produce, which defined the life of the country, was exported to Germany. The reward for its decision was quick to arrive. First, Bulgaria got back Southern Dobruja and its majority Bulgarian population from Romania, and annexed it. (Tsar Boris III managed to get the Soviet Union and Great Britain to recognize this development, and so Southern Dobruja remained part of Bulgaria after the war ended.) At the same time, following Germanys military success in the Balkans, it was granted a strip of land along the BulgarianSerbian border, currently part of Serbia, and called the Western Outlands, Macedonia, and the southern portion of Thrace from Greece. However, it was not allowed to annex these areas. The Germans intended to defer that decision until the end of a successful war. (As already mentioned, this administrative situation proved fatal to the Jewish residents of those regions.) At that time there was complete euphoria among the Bulgarians and a strong sense of gratitude toward Hitler. As evidence of this, on December 24, 1940, without any outside pressure the Bulgarian parliament adopted The Act on Protecting the Nation which introduced discrimination against the Jewish residents and deprived them of major rights, based on the Nuremberg race laws. In debates on the law, the first to oppose Bulgarias official Jewish policy was the synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which issued a resolution of condemnation. The law was also condemned in an open letter by 21 well-known personalities of Bulgarian literary life. Protests were issued by the Bulgarian Writers Association, the Bulgarian Chamber of Attorneys, the Medical Association, and many others.

Meanwhile, under the sponsorship of the Bulgarian Internal Affairs Ministry, an Agency of Jewish Affairs was established in 1941, headed by Alexander Belev, an unconditional supporter of Nazi ideology. The role of this agency was to execute the law and make secret preparations for deportation. By early 1943 the agency had prepared a secret deportation scenario and the target date for the first Bulgarian transports was set at March 1011, 1943. In parallel, the deportation of the Jews in Macedonia and Thrace was begun. When this became apparent in Bulgaria, the Jewish community of Bulgaria and the portion of Bulgarian public opinion that opposed the deportation sounded the alarm. In the meantime, the local community of Kyustendil got word of the secret plans. Despite a travel ban, several Kyustendil residents managed to get to Sofia where they informed their Member of Parliament, Dimitar Peshev, who was a deputy speaker of parliament, of the plans. Peshev asked questions and found that his constituents were right. He then organized 42 members of the governing party, which was one-third of the parliamentary majority, and in the name of the Constitution they issued an open letter protesting the intent to deport Bulgarian citizens. Peshevs open stance brought the secret plan out into the open and finally, on March 9, Tsar Boris III postponed the deportations. But the threat had not disappeared. Not everyone received the postponement order. In Plovdiv several hundred Jews were collected for deportation on the morning of March 10. Plovdiv Metropolitan (Bishop) Kirill immediately telegraphed the Tsar asking for mercy. Then he went to the collection site, joined the Jews who were there and announced that he was going with them. Officials of the Orthodox Church in Sliven, Shumen, Pazardzhik, Haskovo and Samokov protested in much the same way. Finally, the postponement command reached everyone by noon. On April 2, the synod met and designed a plan of action to put a permanent halt to the deportation. In the meantime, Alexander Belev proposed a new target date. He wanted to see the deportation of the Bulgarian Jews completed by the end of September 1943. On May 24 Bulgaria celebrates the Day of Saints Cyril and Methodius. At a ceremonious church service, with the entire Bulgarian government present, Stefan, Metropolitan of Sofia, preached openly against the deportations and anti-Semitism to the shock of the entire audience. A portion of the Jewish community had also chosen this day to organize a demonstration, with assistance from the Communist Party of Bulgaria and Valka Goranova (during the communist era the role she played was attributed to the partys general secretary Todor Zhivkov, which was later proven to be a lie.) Shortly afterwards it was learned that back on May 21, the Bulgarian government had resolved to move the Jews out of the big cities and put the able-bodied men to work on rural projects. In the context of the time, this was an additional postponement of the deportation of the Bulgarian Jews, and it resulted in their survival.