It is a well-known fact that the Bulgarian Jews survived the Holocaust and none of them was deported to the Nazi death camps. On another hand, the Jews from the so called “New Added” territories of the Kingdom - Macedonia and Thrace - were deprived of citizenship and deported to Treblinka where they all perished. What are the facts behind these stories and how the historians interpret them? Salvation and deportation, mythology and reality? Where is the line and what is national historiography choosing to hide, underline, point out or pass over in silence? What made the salvation of 48 000 Jewish lives possible in a country allied to Germany, governed by a pro-Nazi government? And what made the German Ambassador to Sofia in 1943 exclaim: “Bulgarian society does not understand the real meaning of the Jewish question… an ordinary Bulgarian does not understand the meaning of the struggle against Judaism, even more, the racial question in its nature is incomprehensible to him”. And why did the majority of the Bulgarian Jewish community prefer to leave the country that saved their lives after the war?
These are some of the questions that this talk will try to answer together with Dr. Rumyana Marinova-Christidi, Associate Professor and Head of the Hebrew Studies at Sofia University, and Simon Kratholm Ankjærgaard, historian and journalist, author of the book "Oktober 1943" about the Danish Jews' escape to Sweden during WWII.
The event will also feature an exhibition prepared by the Bulgaria National Library about the lives of the Jewish community in Bulgaria from the Middle ages to the present day.
The event is organized in cooperation between the Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria in Copenhagen and the Danish Jewish Museum.
