At a summit meeting on Apbetween King Boris III, Hitler, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Ciano, Bulgaria was granted responsibility for administering most of Vardar Macedonia (a portion of the banovina of Vardar that was created in 1929, a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), Northern Greece (i.e., Western Thrace 4) and the Serbian region of Pirot (part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Bulgaria had allowed German troops to cross Bulgarian territory in their assault against the Yugoslav and Greek Kingdoms. On March 1, 1941, Bulgaria, an irredentist power 3 that had been defeated in the First World War and whose territory was reduced under the Treaty of Neuilly (1919), had joined the Tripartite Pact. First, they involve opposing views about Bulgarian sovereignty within the occupied zones. Several different debates are enmeshed with each other regarding this point. Despite increasing internal and international pressure, no Bulgarian political leader to this day has officially accepted responsibility for the arrests and deportations of Jews during World War Two in territories under Bulgarian occupation. Rival explanations for the differences in fate of Jews in the “old” and “new” kingdoms lie at the heart of historiographical and memorial controversies in recent decades in Bulgaria and worldwide. Only approximately 200 Jews from Western Thrace, most of whom were foreign citizens, were able to avoid being deported. 1 An estimated 200 to 300 Jews successfully avoided deportation in Vardar Macedonia, most by escaping to Albania and/or joining the resistance. Although they were subjected to a wide range of anti-Jewish measures, roughly 48,000 Jews holding Bulgarian citizenship survived the war.

Indeed, Jews were not deported from what was known as the “old” kingdom, i.e., inside the borders as they stood before April 1941. The Contextīulgaria’s policy towards the Jews during World War Two was long perceived as resembling the two faces of Janus. The author wishes to thank Roumen Avramov and two anonymous readers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.

Konstantin petrov knjige