View No. 11 (2015)

No. 11 (2015)

ISSN:
1895-247X
eISSN:
2657-3571

Publication date:
2015-12-01

Section: Contexts

Deportation of Jews from Vardar Macedonia, Belomorie, and Pirot in Bulgarian Historiography

Bartłomiej Rusin

redakcja@holocaustresearch.pl

Political scientist, Slavist, PhD student at the Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations of the Jagiellonian University. He published in "Studia z Dziejów Russia and Central and Eastern Europe", "Przegląd Geopolityczny", "Balcanica Posnaniensia" magazine and collective works. Research interests: the political history of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the history of the Jewish minority in the Balkans.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1282-4878

Institute of Political and INternational Sudies, Jagiellonian University in Krakow

Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 11 (2015), pages: 255-268

Publication date: 2015-12-01

https://doi.org/10.32927/ZZSiM.471

Abstract

This article surveys Bulgarian historical publications (collections of documents, monographs, collective works, and articles in periodicals) regarding the deportation of Jews from the territories annexed by Bulgaria during WWII (Vardan Macedonia, Western Thrace with a fragment of Aegean Macedonia that is, ‘Belomorie’, and Pirot). Such publications have been appearing on the Bulgarian publishing market since 1945, which testifies to Bulgarian scholars’ continuous interest in the issue of the fate of the Jewish minority, which remained under Sophia’s control. Until the fall of communism there were significant ideological limitations to Bulgarian historiography, while scholarly articles or books stressed the role of the communist movement (led by the future General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Todor Zhivkov) and ordinary citizens in rescuing the local minority from deportation to the death centre in Treblinka. The dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and the freeing of historical research from the corset of ideological propaganda brought the first Bulgarian publications that stressed the positive role of King Boris III and certain Bulgarian politicians, for instance, Dimitar Peshev, who purportedly opposed the political pressure exerted by Berlin with regard to deportation of Bulgarian Jews. However, the issue of Bulgaria’s responsibility for deportations of Jews from the annexed territories remains sufficiently researched. One may also see the resistance offered by some scholarly milieus, which wish to regard their country as the only one that did not participate in the Holocaust.

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Rusin, B. (2015). Deportation of Jews from Vardar Macedonia, Belomorie, and Pirot in Bulgarian Historiography. Zagłada Żydów. Studia I Materiały, (11), 255-268. https://doi.org/10.32927/ZZSiM.471

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                            View No. 11 (2015)

No. 11 (2015)

ISSN:
1895-247X
eISSN:
2657-3571

Data publikacji:
2015-12-01

Dział: Contexts