A Report on the Banality of Integrity. An eff ort to explain a unique Bulgarian conduct in the midst of the Holocaust
A hétköznapi erényekről. Kísérlet a holokauszt idején tanúsított egyedülálló bolgár magatartás magyarázatára
Keywords: holocaust;Bulgaria history;second world war;jews;
“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 ina near-miraculous way. Th e 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. Th e Bulgarian historians and the country’s 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.
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