A Report on the Banality of Integrity
()
About this ebook
During World War II in 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 most important role in saving the Jews was played by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
On December 24, 1940 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 Bulgaria’s official Jewish policy was the synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which issued a resolution of condemnation.
Target date for the first Bulgarian transports was set at March 10–11, 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.
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.
Bulgarian society has proved its viability in surviving 500 years of Ottoman domination and still being able to establish a state. But, despite the ups and downs of its history, one cannot say that it has deep-rooted middle class traditions or has built a lengthy democratic order of values, when compared to either Western or Central Europe. Nevertheless, this society was able to pull together and produce a unique outcome during the Holocaust era.
Doncsev’s study is focused on the issues behind that unique outcome and he attempts to explore them and get answers. In addition, he is very conscious of his Bulgarian ethnicity but has lived in Hungary his entire life. Therefore, he is very well acquainted with Bulgaria and its people but has the ability to step back and see them objectively, from the outside. Additionally, he is thoroughly acquainted with the tragedy of the Hungarian Holocaust, so he knows where to focus his attention. This is why I believe this study is both credible and fills a historical gap.
András Klein
Hungary’s Ambassador to Sofia
Related to A Report on the Banality of Integrity
Related ebooks
Through the Embers of Chaos: Balkan Journeys Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAleksandur Stamboliiski: Bulgaria Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBulgaria Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom a Year in Greece Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOhrid City Walk Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Area Handbook for Bulgaria Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrieste and Friuli History, and Tourism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Bike Across The Sea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsItaly's Grande Traversata delle Alpi: GTA: Through the Italian Alps from the Swiss border to the Mediterranean Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSerbia: A Sketch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSmart Guide Italy: Southern Cities: Smart Guide Italy, #25 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Balkan Peninsula Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCathedrals of Australia and Oceania: Cathedrals of the World, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCatholic Kosovo: A Visitor’s Guide to Her People, Churches, Historical Sites, and Her 1,900 Year Journey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTravels in My Eighties: An Account of Twelve Travels Abroad During the Years of 2009–2012 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTravels Through History - Armenia and the UK: Journeys in Armenia and the UK Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeaven: A Traveller’s Guide to the Undiscovered Country (Text Only) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Travel Light in Macedonia - Hiking, cozy villages & crystal clear lakes: Travel Light, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBulgaria - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Cinque Terre Walk, Relax, Cook, and Eat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPetrov-Vodkin: 192 Colour Plates Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDay Walks in the Dolomites: 50 short walks and all-day hikes in the Italian Dolomites Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVietnam, Laos & Cambodia - Another World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Madrid Travel Adventures Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVlachica: Mountaintops Above a Stormy Sea of Contending Empires Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChrist in Russia: The History, Tradition, and Life of the Russian Church Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrance's World Heritage Sites Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHomage to the Eighth District: Tales from Budapest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQueen of Lies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
European History For You
Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dry: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jane Austen: The Complete Novels Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Victorian Lady's Guide to Fashion and Beauty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Celtic Mythology: A Concise Guide to the Gods, Sagas and Beliefs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mein Kampf: English Translation of Mein Kamphf - Mein Kampt - Mein Kamphf Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mein Kampf: The Original, Accurate, and Complete English Translation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGalileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Law Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Discovery of Pasta: A History in Ten Dishes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Book of English Magic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Six Wives of Henry VIII Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Celtic Charted Designs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for A Report on the Banality of Integrity
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
A Report on the Banality of Integrity - Tosho Donchev
Tosho Donchev
A Report on the Banality of Integrity
An effort to explain a unique Bulgarian conduct
in the midst of the Holocaust
Impressum
Napkút Publishers
1027 Budapest, Fazekas u. 10–14., Hungary
Telephone: (+36 1) 787-5889
Mobile phone: (+36 70) 617-8231
E-mail: napkut@gmail.com
Homepage: www.napkut.hu
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
© Napkút Publishers, 2020
ISBN 978 963 263 915 4
Support
Special thanks to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)
for their support in publishing this study.
In memory of my father,
who taught me tolerance
Preface – Rescuing Jews
in Bulgaria
Back in March of 2015, as part of the usual March 15 Hungarian diplomatic road show (connected to Hungary’s 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 (István) Dunjov (Dunyov), a Bulgarian soldier from the Banat region who served in Hungary in Lajos Kossuth’s 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. That’s when our conversation shifted to 1943–1944 and the story of the Jews of Bulgaria. This was the first time I heard Doncsev’s 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 Takács 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 I’d like to very briefly run through the events in chronological order.
First I’d 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 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.
On the eve of World War II, after a measure of hesitation, Bulgaria chose to ally itself with Hitler’s 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 Germany’s military success in the Balkans, it was granted a strip of land along the Bulgarian–Serbian 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