Spas Tashev

THE DEPORTATION OF THE JEWS FROM VARDAR MACEDONIA AND AEGEAN

REGION

FACTS AND MYTHS

Macedonian Scientific Institute

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CONTENTS Foreword

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THE DEPORTATION OF THE JEWS FROM VARDAR MACEDONIA AND AEGEAN REGION - FACTS AND MYTHS

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The accession to the Tripartite Pact

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The transfer of Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region from Germany to Bulgaria

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The status of the Macedonian and Thracian Jews after April 1941

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First deportations of the Jewish population from Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region after April, 1941

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The changes in the geo-strategic situation in the Balkans at the beginning of 1943

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The deportation of the Jews from the “new territories” in 1943.

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The Jews from the “new territories” between anti-Semitism and salvation attempts

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Citizenship and deportation

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Anti-Semitism before the court of the History

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First attempts at the substitution of the historical facts

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The contemporary substitution of the historical facts

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Appendix

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Epilogue 56

Original title of the Bulgarian edition: Депортацията на евреите от Вардарска Македония и

Беломорието - факти и митове

Sofia 2012

Translation from Bulgarian by Zhelyazko Dimitrov

On the front page – A girl with the doll, killed in Treblinka– Original photo from the deportation of the Jews from Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region in 1943.

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FOREWORD

To impute the whole responsibility for the deportation of the Jews from Macedonia and Thrace on Bulgaria is an occurrence that has been observed in two different periods. The curious thing about it is that these periods are divided by nearly four decades.

There are three facts about Bulgaria that distinguish it from the other allies of the German Reich during the years of the Second World War:

1. Bulgaria did not send troops to the eastern front. 2. Bulgaria did not cease diplomatic relations with the USSR. 3. No Jew from the old territory of Bulgaria was deported to the concentration camps. This wise policy was imposed by King Boris III who ruled Bulgaria through his

authoritarian regime. As a result of this policy Bulgaria avoided devastation during the war. The government sent three infantry corps into Greece and Yugoslavia. The casualties suffered were much smaller in comparison with the eventual losses that might have been suffered, if Bulgaria had sent troops to the Eastern Front. The economy of Bulgaria worked for the needs of the war and many people made money by that. After 09.09.1944 the Bulgarian people honoured the memory of the monarch, poisoned by Hitler. The new communist regime wanted to blacken the image of King Boris. That is why it worked out the legend of a King, who was an anti-Semite, a vampire and a persecutor of the Jews.

The strongest accusation against Bulgaria could be the Holocaust of the Jews in Thrace and Macedonia, without even mentioning the presence of the Wehrmacht and Gestapo in these lands. The Jews from the Jewish section of the Fatherland Front* provided an alibi to their friends, the Bulgarian communists, transformed into socialists in our time.

Forty years passed by. Some of the former “udbadzhii”** not only invented a new state called Macedonia, a new language and a new history. The availability of martyrs is the best instrument for implanting a new and fictional ethnicity and nation. But when there are no such martyrs, they must be invented. So they say that the Jews in this story were actually Macedonians, sent to death camps by a cruel Bulgarian monarch. For the purpose of creating this artificial Macedonian nation, the facts are distorted, the history is falsified; the meanest demagogy is used in the dispute. The Macedonian “accusers” of Bulgaria use the same means as those of the “historians”, who graduated from the school of Zhdanov.

Recently a fierce anti-Bulgarian campaign with fabricated accusations against Bulgaria

concerning the Holocaust in Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region has been waged all over the world. This campaign is led by Serbian and Macedonian Jews. Bulgarian Jews from the left side of the political spectrum are supporting them. But the most important leaders are the former “udbadzhii” from Skopje.

Spas Tashev, with his analysis grounded on facts and documents, stands firmly in opposition to this campaign. My father Benjamin Arditi taught me that history should be written in this manner – using facts and documents. All other ways are pure political policies and journalism. The “historians” from Skopje ignore the facts. For them the salvation of

* The Fatherland Front – Organization created in 1942 by Bulgarian democratic parties and the communists. At the end of 1944, after the gradual elimination, including physical liquidation of the leaders of the democratic parties was controlled by the communists. ** udbadzhia – UDBA employees (State Security Administration), the Yugoslav version of the KGB

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48 000 Bulgarian Jews is an unknown and unimportant event. Spas Tashev has diligently and conscientiously gathered historical materials, some known and others – unknown until now.

Regarding the sad reality of the past 45 years of communist dictatorship and national nihilism and the recent 20 years of our unclear transition from communism to democracy, we can finally say, that this book researches the disputed question. Everyone knows that in the “new territories” the Germans were the real masters and not the Bulgarian administration. Everyone knows that the Jews in Thrace and Macedonia were not Bulgarian citizens; they were citizens of Greece and Serbia ergo of states, occupied by Hitler. Bulgarians and Jews secretly thought and whispered about these matters, but could not speak loudly or protest against them. Spas Tashev finally lifts the veil. In his scientific investigation he proves the following points:

1. The anti-Jewish Nation Protection Act was imposed by the German authorities

despite the big resistance on the part of King Boris. 2. While the Jews in South Dobrudzha received Bulgarian passports, the Jews from

Macedonia and the Aegean Region remained Serbian and Greek citizens. 3. The submission of Bulgaria to the Tripartite Pact was imposed by Nazi Germany

in spite of the resistance of King Boris 4. The landing of Field Marshal List near Ruse was a violation of the sovereignty of

Bulgaria. The country was practically occupied, but preserved its ostensibly independent government.

5. The Wehrmacht invaded and took over Greece and Yugoslavia. The first occupation is most important in regard to the international law.

6. The Bulgarian troops in “the new territories” were subordinated to the German command.

7. The annexation of Thrace and Macedonia, as it was presented by Bogdan Filov, was not recognized by the Germans. They considered these lands as their occupation area with temporal civil Bulgarian administration.

8. Nazi troops were present in Macedonia and the Aegean Region from 1941 to their retreat in October - November 1944. Both territories had mixed Bulgaro-German Jurisdiction until September 1944.

9. The Jews from the “New Territories” did not serve in the labour groups like the other Jews from the old territories. So they were treated as “foreign” Jews.

10. The fate of this population lay in the hands of the Germans, who conducted their policy via the German embassy in Sofia by Beckerle and Dannecker.

11. The main leader of the deportation was Adolf Beckerle, the German ambassador in Sofia, who led the negotiations with the Bulgarian authorities.

12. The inglorious conference in Wannsee determined the number of the Jews in Bulgaria as 48 000 – equal to the number of the Jews, living in the old territories of Bulgaria. The Jews from the “new territories” were not considered Bulgarian Jews.

13. The allies managed to deceive Hitler that a landing in Greece would happen. The 7th Bulgarian division in Northern Greece was subordinated to the German command. At the same tome the Germans considered Vardar Macedonia as a region of former Serbia.

14. The notorious Belev – Dannecker agreement was falsified by the Commissar for Jewish Matters Belev. This falsification was made due to the will of Belev to deport 8 600 Bulgarian Jews. Ergo the Bulgarian government has never decided to deport Jews with Bulgarian citizenship. The agreement was a pure falsification.

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15. Belev acted under direct German leading. He received orders from Adolf Beckerle, not from the Ministry of Interior. Thrace and Macedonia as military districts were subordinated to the German command.

16. The guards on the trains, that transported the Jews to Poland, were German, not Bulgarian. All three deportations from Macedonia to Poland were escorted by German soldiers and policemen. Spas Tashev presents original photographs in support of this.

17. Adolf Beckerle was arrested by the Red Army. He was sent to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. There he admitted that he managed to deport the Jews from Thrace and Macedonia by exerting pressure on the Bulgarian authorities.

18. The Macedonian resistance did not make any attempts to attack the “Monopol” transit deportation camp in Skopje. The famous “partisans” of Tito did nothing to attack the trains, passing through Serbia on the same tracks. Archival photographs are presented that clearly show that German soldiers took part in the deportation and escorted the trains.

19. Only the Bulgarians tried to save Jews. The salvation of Skender Bey – Rafael Kamhi in Solun is an example of this. King Boris sent his private aide-de-camp to set him free and to bring him in Sofia. Workers of the IMRO also helped for the salvation of the Jews.

20. The bishop of Sofia Stefan said at a meeting of the Holy Synod that for the Aegean Jews the intervention of the Synod was ineffectual because those Jews were treated as foreigners, not as Bulgarian citizens. These are the words of a cleric, who lived at this time and was not influenced by the “historians” born after 1945.

I would like to add two new arguments that support the standpoint of Spas Tashev.

It is about the notorious Belev – Dannecker agreement. In paragraph four we can read: “For each transport a list of the individuals, who are about to be transported, will be drawn up, which should contain the names, surnames, place of birth, last place of residence and occupation of the Jews, in triplicate. Two copies should be given to the German, who escorted the transport and one - to the German ambassador in Sofia.” The relations between Belev and Dannecker are clear. Belev was the servant and Dannecker – the master. The commissar worked directly with the SS and the Bulgarian authorities were put in a fait accompli situation.

The German ambassador in Sofia Adolf Beckerle was a former policeman and bully. His diary was published in 1992 in Bulgaria. On page 46 we can read the following: “I found out that a new map was published in the Reich where Bulgaria was described as a neutral side and the freed territories – as occupied by us.” Finally the Germans let the cat out of the bag. Here we have clear evidence of the real masters of Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region. These lands were German, not Bulgarian as the false propaganda of Bogdan Filov claimed. The accusers of Bulgaria don’t admit the fact that the “new territories” were occupied by the Wehrmacht. The German occupier could do whatever he wanted, including deporting the local Jews to the eastern territories.

Even today discussions are made whether Bulgaria could have saved the Jews from Thrace and Macedonia. Dobrudzha was annexed to Bulgaria according to international law. The Jews there received Bulgarian citizenship and there was no Holocaust. Let’s take a brief look at the situation of Bulgaria in 1941. The “authors” of the anti-Bulgarian history were not alive at the time and make some fatal mistakes. They conceal the fact that Bulgaria was a small and weak state. The army was brave, but poorly equipped. Such an army could not determine who would rule the World – the democrats, the Nazis, or the Bolsheviks. Bulgaria has suffered two national disasters and King Boris tried to prevent a third one. Bulgaria was

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practically a vassal of Germany; it was independent in name only. The German military command was placed at Boris Park, which lies five minutes away from the palace. The Gestapo even prepared a coup against the Government with the help of the ratniks and legioners.* Thrace and Macedonia were originally occupied by the German army without any Bulgarian military participation. The Germans were the masters of the situation; they considered the Jews in these territories as “theirs”. Please see the evidence of Liliana Panitsa, private secretary of the commissar Belev.

I appeal to all honest people, who are interested in the history of the deportation of my brothers from Skopje, Bitolia, Seres and Kavala. If we impartially have in mind the political situation at that moment, how could we convict Bulgaria and ask that it should take the whole responsibility for the tragedy, called Holocaust? Indeed Bulgarian soldiers and policemen, together with the Nazis, participated in the deportations. The soldiers and the policemen were young and wild; they were swayed by the false propaganda of the German agents Filov, Gabrovski and Belev. But for every one of these soldiers, a hundred honest Bulgarians stood and helped the Jews in old Bulgaria. To convict Bulgaria for the Holocaust in the “New Territories” would be a betrayal of those courageous Bulgarians. To ignore the role of great Bulgarians like Liliana Panitsa, Bishop Stefan, Bishop Kiril, Dimitar Peshev, Vladimir Kurtev, Nikola Mushavov, Dimo Kazasov and many others, who helped the Jews would be shame.

The individuals who want to bring shame on Bulgaria and the Bulgarian people underrate the strategic and factual role of the Nazis in the Holocaust in Thrace and Macedonia. They absolve the real criminals - Hitler, Eichmann and Beckerle, from their guilt. Without noticing it they are participating in the rehabilitation of the beasts of Berlin. I am a true son of the Jewish people and I hesitated whether to take on the task of writing the foreword of this scholarly essay of Spas Tashev. All Jews from Gumurdzhina, Drama, Kavala, Xanthi, Seres, Dedeagach, Skopje, Bitolya, Shtip etc. were my ancestors, grandmothers, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters… I cry silently for them in the long nights. These people could have been saved in 1943, but there was no one who was able to do it. The Greek and the Serbian army collapsed within two weeks since the German attack. The Serbian and the Greek king fled to London. Today, in 2012, no one can save them, but we can save the historical truth. My friends and relatives were the Jews from Solun, Athens, Belgrade, Bucharest, Prague, Budapest, Rome, Paris etc. I cry for them too. The enemies of Bulgaria are not interested in the tragedy of those people. They only cry hypocritically for them. But they will gain little political capital from their death. Hitler exterminated six million Jews from all of Europe without the Help of Boris III and this proves that even if the Bulgarians had refused to participate in the deportation the results would have been the same. Because of this blatant hypocrisy I decided to accept the invitation of Spas Tashev and I wrote these words.

Samuel Ardittis Israel

* Ratniks and legioners - members of pro-Nazi Bulgarian organizations.

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THE DEPORTATION OF THE JEWS FROM VARDAR MACEDONIA AND AEGEAN REGION - FACTS AND MYTHS

Before I wrote this work I saw dozens of

archive photographs and newsreels of the deportation of the Jews from Macedonia and the Aegean Region. With immense pain in my heart I looked at the images of children that could have been alive today, if they hadn’t been annihilated in the Treblinka Concentration Camp.

I dedicate this research to the mothers who with fear in their eyes witnessed the death of their children and I write these lines with the hope that this will never happen again.

In the last 20 years, Bulgarian scholars have relatively objectively answered the questions concerning the German pressure on Bulgaria to impose anti-Jewish legislation during the Second World War and the problems of its enforcement, as a result of which 50 thousand Bulgarian Jews have been saved. There are several studies dealing with this topic, researched by Bulgarian Jews and foreign authors1. But the main topic of research in these works is the Bulgarian Jews i.e. those who were Bulgarian citizens. The problem with the Bulgarian policy towards the Jews from Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region (modern Northern Greece) – territories that were only administrated by Bulgaria between April 1941 and September 1944, has been only fragmentarily mentioned. This unexplored problem from the Bulgarian historiography has formed a gap that has been filled by Macedonian and Greek publications that, depending on the political situation, on a smaller or larger scale impose anti-Bulgarian standpoints that at some point lead to the full twisting of the historical events2. These publications have received differing public responses, depending on the particular political and most of which have foreign-political aims and campaigns. This research is dedicated to these problems.

The accession to the Tripartite Pact

On January the 23d 1941 the Nation Protection Act (NPA)3 came into power in Bulgaria. Although it contradicts the Turnovo Constitution, it was accepted by the Bulgarian parliament under the pressure of Hitler and copied the Nürnberg system of anti-Jewish legislation.∗ In regard to the foreign pressure and the resistance of King Boris III against the

1 Glasove v zastita na grazhdanskoto obstestvo. Protokoli na Svetia Sinod na Balgarskata pravoslavna carkva po evreiskia vapors (1940 – 1944), Sofia 2008, page 136; Bar-Zoar, Mihael, Izvan hvatkata na Hitler. Geroichnoto spasiavane na balgarskite evrei. Sofia 2011, page 280; Koen, David, Evreite v Balgaria (1878 – 1949) Sofia 2008, page 330; Arditi, Samuil, Chovekat, koito izigra Hitler: Tzar Boris III, gonitel ili priatel na balgarskite Evrei, Ruse 2008, page 97; Dimitar Peshev, Spomeni, Sofia 2004, page 350; Gabriele Nisim, Chovekat koito spria Hitler, Sofia 1999, page 407 and others 2 Matkovski, Apeksandar, Tragediata na Evreite od Makedonia, Skopje 1962, page 102; Matkovski, Aleksandar, Istoria na Evreite vo Makedonia, Skopje 1983, page 211; Kolomonos, Jamila and Veskovik-Vangeli, Vera, Evreite vo Makedonia vo Vtorata svetska voina (1941 – 1945), v. I and II, Skopje, 1986 and others 3 State Journal, issue 16, Jan the 23rd 1941 ∗ Despite the popular belief that the NPA was mainly anti-Jewish, it contains some other decrees, for example against the Bulgarian freemasonry. This fact proves the unsoundness of the law because, according to D. Peshev, the Bulgarian freemasonry used its international relations “in protection of the interest of Bulgaria” and the

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NPA the royal counsellor Lubomir Lulchev writes about position of the King in his diary: “I tried to delay and didn’t want to do it (to accept the anti-Jewish legislation), but now, since Romania, Hungary and even France have got it, I decided that it would be better to do it by ourselves, rather than others forcing us to do it. This, of course is better, but we should make it fair and prevent any arbitrariness”.4 In regard to the NPA, the ex people’s prosecutor in the 7th Section (anti-Jewish activities) of the so called “People’s Court” Eli Baruch writes in 1960 in Tel Aviv the following: “the German authorities… forced the Bulgarian government to adopt… the anti-Jewish legislation”.5 The second part of the NPA is entitled: “On the individuals of Jewish origin”. In article 21, letter a) it was forbidden for individuals of Jewish origin to become Bulgarian citizens. This decree is about future naturalizations, while the Jews in Bulgaria remain Bulgarian citizens. The decree in article 21, letter a) would play a decisive role and had fatal consequences for the the Jewish population in Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region after April 1941. But as of January 1941 this question was not considered of great importance. The Greco-Italian started on October the 28th 1940. Despite the initial expectations for an easy victory for Mussolini, the war activities didn’t develop as the Italians had planned and the campaign stagnated. This necessitated the support of The German Reich for its ally and on March the 1st 1941 Germany declared war on Greece. On the same date Bulgaria joined the Tripartite Pact in Vienna. The preparations for this accession started from the beginning of 1941 but were done under strong German pressure and internal resistance from King Boris III. This resistance has been evidenced in the diary of the prime-minister Bogdan Filov, who, after his return from his meeting with Hitler on January the 4th 1941, informed the King of the results, whose reaction was the following: “initially the King said that he prefers to abdicate or to throw the country in the hands of Russia, although it may lead to bolshevisation of the country. He … cared about what would happen to the people”.6 In his memoirs the deputy chairmen of the parliament Dimitar Peshev wrote: “When the inevitable was to come – foreign (German) troops to enter Bulgaria in one fateful war, it should have been decided in which capacity do they come in”.7 The unusual in this case is that the German troops started entering Bulgarian territory at 12.01 am on March the 1st 1941, but the Tripartite Pact accession agreement was signed at 16.30 pm. The more paradoxical thing about this was that the Bulgarian parliament ratified the agreement on the next day – March the 2nd, when the German troops had already crossed the entire territory of the country.8 According to international law this means disrespect of Bulgarian sovereignty on the part of Hitler. This fact was stressed by the former people’s prosecutor Eli Baruch, who writes in 1960 the following: “the German authorities… occupied Bulgaria”.9 Another Jewish researcher from this time wrote: “Bulgaria was an occupied country with the privilege of an ostensible independence, a situation, used by Hitler for deception and misuse”.10 These conclusions are quite accurate, because Bulgaria had already

Jews themselves have “passionately defended the cause of the Bulgarian national minorities” (Memoirs, p. 210 - 212). 4 Lulchev, Lubomir, Tainite na dvortcovia zhivot. Dnevnik (1938 – 1944), Sofia 1992, page 318 5 Baruh, Eli, Iz istoriata na balgarskoto evreistvo, Tel Aviv 1960, p. 7 6 Filov, Bogdan, Dnevnik, Sofia 1990, p. 221 7 Peshev, D., Spomeni, p. 198 8 Nisim, Gabriele, Chivekat, koito spria Hitler, Sofia 1999, p. 119 9 Baruh, Eli, Iz istoriata… p. 7 10 Grinberg, Nathan, Hvala na balgarskiya narod spasitel, In: Chest i priznatelnost na balgarskia narod – spasitel, Jaffa 1964, p. 6

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been occupied, when it formally entered the Tripartite Pact.∗ The Italian Researcher Gabrielle Nazism came to the conclusion that in this situation Bulgaria had no other useful move it could make. “At that moment it wasn’t possible for Bulgaria to find an alternative, that wouldn’t slide the country into destruction”.11 The transfer of Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region from Germany to Bulgaria

On April the 6th 1941 the German army invaded Yugoslavia and Greece, on 7th it entered Skopje. No Bulgarian soldier participated in the engagements, the German army solely occupied Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region. According to international law the principle of the first occupation takes precedence. The Germans treated part of the Yugoslav and Greek population as prisoners of war. This is accurate not only for the captured soldiers, but also for the Greek and Yugoslav Jews. After the collapse of monarchist Yugoslavia and the deployment of the German troops, the formation of the so called “task forces” (Einsatzgruppen), began. These Einsatzgruppen were controlled by the Reich Security Head Office (the “Reichssicherheitshauptamt”). The task force sent from Berlin was called “Einsatzgruppe für Jugoslawien”. Its head office was in Belgrade from where it controlled the other subdivisions, situated in other towns, one of which was Skopje.12 The capitulation of Yugoslavia was signed on April the 17th.13 The main reason for the dispatch of the Bulgarian troops and administration to Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region was the need for disengagement of the German forces and their transfer to the east after the capitulation of Yugoslavia. The incoming Bulgarian troops however, had no independent command. In a notification from 23.04.1941 the commander of the German army described them as “Bulgarian forces subordinated (to the German command)”.14 The transfer of Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region from Germany to Bulgaria in the late April 1941 wasn’t sanctioned by any official document. The arrival of the Bulgarian army and administration happened on the grounds of the Klodius - Popov Agreement**, signed on 24.04.2041 regarding the “part of the former Yugoslav state, taken by Bulgaria” and on 27.04.2041 regarding the Greek territories. From the contents of this agreement it is clear that the Bulgarian government only took on the obligations that granted the rights of the Germans on the occupied Vardar Macedonia, Thrace and the Morava River region, which were called “territories, transferred (from Germany) to Bulgaria”. Nothing is mentioned in regard to the conditions, under which this “transfer” should take part and to the rights of Bulgaria on these territories, except that these issues would be discussed after the war. The agreement granted the “presence of the German forces in these territories”, their upkeep was transferred to Bulgaria.15 Point 5 of the agreement concerns the possibility workers from the former Yugoslav territories, taken by Bulgaria, “to continue working in Germany”. The Bulgarian government obligated itself “not to make any obstacles to the further negotiating of such traveling workers to Germany”. The researcher of the problem for

∗ Other Jewish researchers from this time also came to the conclusion that Bulgaria was de facto occupied. See for example Koen, David, Ekspropriatciata na evreiskite imustestva prez perioda na hitleristkata okupacia. Godishnik na OKPOE, Sofia 1967 11 Nisim, G. Chivekat, koito... pages 122 - 123 12 Matkovski, Aleksandar, Tragedijata ….., pages 37 - 38 13 Rossia. ХХ vek. Dokumentuy. 1941 god. Kniga vtoraya. Moskva 1998, s. 5 14 Stojchevski, Gjorgi, Nekolko germanski dolumenti od okupaciata na Makedonia od 1941 – 1943 god. In: Glasnik na institutot za nacionalna istoria, Skopje, January – April 1988, p. ** The agreement has no heading and was signed by Karl Klodius, the deputy chief of the trade policy compartment of the ministry of exterior of the Reich. From Bulgarian side the document was signed by Ivan Popov – minister of foreign affairs of Bulgaria 15 Central State Archive, F 176K, op. 8, a.e. 967

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the Bulgarian presence in Northern Greece during the WWII Hans-Joachim Hoppe describes this as “recruitment of workers for Germany”.16 Despite the fact that the territorial changes were not internationally recognized, some indications for the toleration of the German policy could be observed within international diplomacy from this period. For example “on May the 8th 1941 the deputy commissar of the foreign affairs of the Soviet Union Vishinski invited the Yugoslav ambassador Gavrilovich and explained him the decision of the Soviet government to sever diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia because it was not clear where the government of Yugoslavia was situated at that moment”.17 On May the 12th 1941 during a meeting between the Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador of the USSR in Berlin Dekazsonov and the German ambassador in Moscow Schulenburg the satisfaction from German side was expressed “for the actions taken in recent time by Stalin, namely the declaration of the Soviet government that it terminates the activities of the diplomatic missions of… Yugoslavia on the territory of the USSR. The embassy and the representative of the German information bureau have duly informed the Soviet embassy in Berlin of this action”.18 Bulgaria presented the transfer of Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region under Bulgarian administration as “liberation”. The Bulgarian Jews, well integrated in Bulgarian society, were emotionally committed to the national unification of Bulgaria∗, which was the main political aim of Bulgarian foreign policy from 1878 to 1944. The Jew Astruk Kalev writes the following about the Jews living in Bulgaria according the census from 1934: “So from the Bulgarian Jews, 43 667 (89.92%) were born on the territory of modern Bulgaria and the main part of the rest 4 989 (10.08%) Jews are born in Dobrudzha, Thrace and Macedonia. This fact gives the reason why Bulgarian Jews considered themselves as Bulgarians and why after their departure abroad… their commitment to Bulgaria – their Motherland – remains”.19 It is interesting to take a look at these events from the eyes of the local Jews. Abraham Sadikario from Bitola writes the following: “when the Germans came, the streets were deserted, some people resisted but they killed them all. Just like that. The Germans were in Bitola a very short time before the Bulgarians came and occupied Bitola. Older Macedonians greeted them like liberators. They considered Bulgarians to be their own people”.20 While the accession of Dobrudzha happened in 1940 with an international treaty, the territorial changes of 1941 were during wartime and no other country in the world, including Germany, recognized them. In different German publications from this time these territories

16 Hoppe, Hans-Joachim, Germany, Bulgaria, Greece: Their Relations and Bulgarian Policy In Occupied Greece, In: Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, Pella Publishing Company, New York, 1984 – 10, p. 44 17 Ivanovich, Semiriaga Michail, Taini stalinskoi diplonacii. 1939–1945, Moscow 1992, p. 27 18 Rossiya. ХХ vek. Dokumenti. 1941 god. Kniga vtoraya…, p. 194 ∗ The Bulgarian Exarchate was established in 1870, which was a form of cultural autonomy of the Bulgarian people and included the three historical Bulgarian territories Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia. In 1877 the conference of the ambassadors of the Great Powers in Istanbul made a project for the establishment of two autonomous Bulgarian territories that overlapped the boundaries of the Bulgarian Exarchate. On March the 3rd 1978 the Bulgarian state was restored in the historical boundaries of the Bulgarian nation, but in July, 1878 the Berlin Congress divided Bulgaria into three parts: The Principality of Bulgaria, the autonomous region East Roumelia and Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace, both returned to the Ottoman Empire. In 1885 the Principality of Bulgaria and East Roumelia were unified and in 1893 the Internal Macedono-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization (IMORO, later IMRO), that fought for the autonomy of Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace on the model of East Roumelia was established. 19 Kalev, Astruk, Demografsko I stopansko polozhenie na evreite v Balgaria; In: Baruh, Eli, Iz istoriata… p. 24 20 The memoirs of Avram Sadikario were written down in March 2005 in Skopje by Rakel Asiel and are published on the website of the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation with main office in Vienna and Budapest (http://centropa.org).

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were not shown as part of Bulgaria, but as zones “under Bulgarian administration”21 or as “German occupation zone, administered by Bulgaria”.22 That’s why Germany left, even though reduced in numbers, their own troops and police in Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region. Macedonian historiography is convinced, that “near the Bulgarian Armed Forces (in Macedonia), German military units, detachments and police were present… The German military and police command intervened in the work of the Bulgarian… authorities”.23 The German troops were present in “the new territories” during the whole period from April 1941 to their withdrawal in October, 1944. An example of this is that in a note of the American general consul in Istanbul from August the 7th 1943 it was written, that “between Gevgeli and Skoplje our informer saw five or six trains of German soldiers”.24 According to the information of the German military attaché in Sofia from July 1944, the number of the German troops in Bulgaria was 20, 924 in June and 22, 021 in July.25 Most of them were located in the “new territories”.

The status of the Macedonian and Thracian Jews after April 1941 After the end of April 1941 the Bulgarian administration found 4,918 Jews in Skopje district, 3,508 Jews in Bitolia district, and 4641 in the Aegean region or 13 067 Jews, living in the “new territories”. The combined Bulgarian-German jurisdiction influenced the legal status of the Jews in Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region. On June the 5th 1942 the council of ministers in Sofia approved the Regulation for the citizenship in the territories, liberated in 1941.26 According to article 4 “All Yugoslav and Greek citizens with non-Bulgarian origin that, as of the moment when this Regulation comes into power, have permanent residence in the territories, liberated in 1941 become Bulgarian citizens… This clause does not affect the individuals of Jewish origin”. The decrees of article 4 of the Regulation are in unison with the interdictions for the individuals of Jewish origin, incorporated in art. 21 letter a) of the NPA. As we previously stated, the NPA was adopted under German pressure, so we may take it for granted, that the refusal to give Bulgarian citizenship to the Jews from the “new territories” was part of the conditions, under which Germany yielded Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region to Bulgaria for administrating. It is an interesting fact that in circular letter № 5347, which concerned the implementation of the Regulation, the individuals of Jewish origin weren’t directly mentioned, although it contains a whole section for the implementation of art. 4.27 After all, circular letter № 5347 left one option from which a small group of Jews foreign nationals will take advantage. A special rider in circular letter № 5347 contains the following text: “It should be noted that the rights of individuals, local inhabitants, who have foreign citizenship (non-Yugoslav or non-Greek) – Italian, Turkish or American etc. shall not be affected. These individuals shall retain the citizenship that they had during the Yugoslav or Greek government”.28

21 Look for example at “Das Reich”, Berlin, 18.10.1942 22 Popov, Lieutenant General, Deinost na balgarskoto glavno komandvane prez Vtorata svetovna voina, Sofia 1993 23 Istoria na makedonsiat narod, v. 3, Skopje 1969, page 283. The same is present in the shortened edition from 1988, which speaks of a lasting conclusion in the Macedonian historiography on this question 24 Kitroeff, Alexandros, Documents: The Jews in Greece 1941 – 1944 – Eyewitness Accounts, In: Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, Vol. XII, Pella Publishing Company, New York 1985 – 10, page 20 25 Tretiot Raih I Makedonia 1941 – 1945 (dokumenti), Skopje 1996, p. 121 26 State Journal, issue 124, June the 10th 1942 27 State Journal, issue 161, July the 24th 1942 28 There again

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In the end of 2011 I made inquiry in the Military Archive in Veliko Tarnovo concerning the participation of the Jewish population in the so called “labour brigades”. It turned out, that while all Bulgarian Jews in the age between 20 and 45 (around 7000) were mobilized each year for the time between 1941-1944 in labour brigades and sent to construction sites, some of which were in the “new territories”, the Jews from Thrace and Macedonia were not included in the labour groups. This speaks of the fact, that in the period between 1941 and 1943 this population was not under the regulation of the Bulgarian institutions. According to Gligor Todorovski during the above mentioned period of time the Jews in Vardar Macedonia as non-Bulgarian nationals “were registered in the Foreign Citizens Bureau of the District Police Office”.29 The same author comes to the conclusion, that “the Skopje police administration… in fact was obliged to keep the movement and the activities of the Jews in the town and the district under observation” because “the police had to implement very strictly the requirements of the Germans military and other authorities concerning the complete control over the Jews in all occupied territories”.30

By analyzing the changes for the Jewish population after the arrival of the Bulgarian administration in the end of April 1941 A. Matkovski comes to the following conclusion: “The Skopje Task Force acted on the whole territory of Macedonia until the transfer of power to the Bulgarian occupier. The Eichmann* representative did not solve the Jewish problem through the task forces…, but through the German embassy in Sofia, where his agents Beckerle** and Dannecker*** were present, through the Ministry of Interior of Bulgaria and also through the Jewish Matters Commissariat, linked with this ministry”.31 In this case the important conclusion is that independently of the transmission of administrative transfer of Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region to Bulgaria, the fate of the Jewish population in the two regions remained in the hands of the Germans. The Jews in Macedonia and the Aegean Region were close witnesses of the events that lead to the changes in April 1941. They were aware of the fact that the de-facto occupier of these territories was the German Wehrmacht. In an article published in the Tel Aviv magazine “Aki Yerushalayim” written in Ladino**** Moshe Shaul clearly states, that the German troops were the main enemy of the Jews in Macedonia: “Even less popular is the fate of the Jewish community in Macedonia…, where the consequences of the Holocaust (Shoa) were much more tragic: from around 7,500 people who were part of this community in Skopje, Monastir (Bitola), Shtip, only 200 survived the Holocaust, most of them were young men, who decided to run away or to hide from the Nazis and who joined the partisan and fought heroically against the Germans”.32

29 Todorovski, Gligor, Novi Podatotci za sostoibata na Evreite vo Makedonia vo 1941 godina; In: Glasnik na institutot za nacionalna istoria, vol. 1-2, Skopje 1995, p. 71 30 There again * Adolf Eichmann, Nazi officer, chief of the Jewish Matters Compartment in Gestapo, one of the main organizers of the Holocaust in the German occupied territories. After the WWII he tried to hide, but in 1960 the Israeli intelligence, Mosad, found him in Argentina and sent a special unit that detained him and sent him secretly in Israel, where in 1961 he was sentenced for crimes against humanity. ** Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, Obergruppenführer of the Sturmabteilung, minister plenipotentiary of the Third Reich in Bulgaria *** Theodor Dannecker, high Nazi functionary, close assistant of Adolf Eichmann. Stayed in Bulgaria from January to September 1943 as an adviser on the “Jewish problem” in the German embassy in Sofia 31 Matkovski, A. Tragediata ….., pages 38 **** Ladino, well known as Judeo-Spanish, was the mother language of the most Balkan Jews. It is a mixture of old Spanish and Turkish and other Balkan languages loanwords, incl. Bulgarian 32 Shaul, Moshe, Sentro memorial de las viktimas de la Shoa an Makedonia; In: Aki Yerushalayim, Nr. 86, Yerushalayim, oktobre 2009

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First deportation of Jewish population from Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region after April 1941

The Nazi presence in Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region after April 1941 was the reason for the organization of anti-Jewish activities including the initial deportation of Jews. Most commonly, the deported individuals of Jewish origin from the German occupation zone in Yugoslavia were people, who sought refuge in the parts of Macedonia under Bulgarian administration. We should give prominence to the fact that these Jews came legally into the “new territories”, with Italian travel documents “on which an incoming visa from the Bulgarian embassy in Serbia was stamped”.33 Despite this official permission from the Bulgarian authorities, the Jews who arrived at the rail station in Skopje were warned that they couldn’t stay in the city. This was due to the fact that from April 1941 to October 1944, the train station in Skopje was run by the German military authorities. The mixed German-Bulgarian jurisdiction of the “new territories” allowed the Germans to organize the deportation of these Jews. The Macedonian historian Gligor Todorovski describes the deportation of 47 Jews from Skopje with the following words: “A significant group of Jews from Skopje was expelled on 25th of November, 1941. They were driven out and loaded onto a German train, escorted by German and Bulgarian policemen”.34 We should state that during the whole of 1941 and the first half of 1942, the question for a possible deportation of Jewish population was not raised with the Bulgarian government. The fact that the deportation was executed despite the Bulgarian entrance visas evidences that such actions in Vardar Macedonia were solely a German initiative that was carried out by the mixed German-Bulgarian jurisdiction in these territories. During this period, despite the German pressure, the Bulgarian government cooperated with the International Committee of the Red Cross in connection with the passage of a convoy of 200 Jewish children from Hungary and Romania travelling to Palestine. Officially on 15th of October 1942, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the first time assigned to the German ambassador in Sofia Adolf - Heinz Beckerle the task of starting negotiations with the authorities for the deportation of the Bulgarian Jews to the eastern territories.35 In an official Bulgarian note from November the 12th the proposal was accepted in principle and so the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (CJA) as a part of the Ministry of Interior was created, led by Aleksandar Belev. Therefore the creation of the CJA and the appointment of its chief commissar happened under direct German suggestion and pressure. As a Nazi supporter, Belev visited Germany in the end of 1941 under the pretext of studying the Nurnberg legislation. During his stay there until February the 14th Belev kept in close contact with agents from Gestapo and the SS.36 Belev’s stay in Germany overlapped with the so called “Wansee Conference” that took place on January the 20th 1942 in a suburb of Berlin. In it, the Reich’s Main Security Office adopted the idea for the “final solution” of the Jewish problem in Europe. For this purpose the Nazis made a list of the Jewish population for each axis-country separately. The fate of the Jews from the territories occupied by the Wehrmacht was unilaterally determined by Berlin. This was the reason why the Jewish population of Bulgaria consisted of only 48 000 people. This was the number of the Jews in Bulgaria before 1941, Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region were excluded. The Jews in these territories were Greek or Yugoslav nationals and citizens of states, occupied by Germany due to this fact they were considered as under German jurisdiction and their fate was decided by Germany. This is evident in the data for

33 Todorovski, Gligor, Novi podatoci…, p. 75 34 There again 35 Popova, Kamelia, Spasiavaneto na balgarskite evrei; In: Nie, issue 4, Sofia, 1998 36 Bar-Zoar, Mihael, Izvan hvatkata na Hitler. Geroichnoto spasiavane na balgarskite evrei. Sofia 2011, page 63

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Serbia, where 10 000 Jews were listed. We should consider the fact that most of the Jews from Serbia were destroyed by the German army in 1941∗. That’s why these 10 000 Jews were probably ones, who lived in Vardar Macedonia and the Morava valley region. According to d-r Michael Bar-Soar, during his stay in Germany Aleksandar Belev was informed by “close friends… by Gestapo and SS… about the terrifying secret goal that the Reich aimed at”.37 Gabriele Nasim states that after his return from Germany and his appointment as a chief commissar of JMC “Belev established direct contact with the German embassy and with the headquarters of the Gestapo in Berlin”.38 Emi Baruh describes him as one from “the agents of Nazi Germany”39, for Samuil Arditi he is a “professional agent of the Gestapo”.40 It was not a coincidence that when on the 2nd of February 1943 he met Theodor Dannecker, whose official position in the German embassy in Sofia was “advisor on all Jewish problems and the problem of the deportation specifically”, he had already finished the deportation plan. This plan was presented in a report to the Minister of Interior Gabrovsky on Feb. the 4th 1941. Until this date the Bulgarian government had never known about the formulation of such plan.

The changes in the geo-strategic situation on the Balkans at the beginning of 1943 The intensification of the German pressure at the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1943 is connected to the change in the geo-strategic situation, because during this period it became clear, that Germany was going to be driven out of North Africa and the possibility of an Allied landing in the Balkans became real. Under these circumstances Hitler issued directive Nr. 47 on the 28th December 1942, according to which the Bulgarian troops in the Aegean Region were subordinated to the German command in the light of a possible Anglo-American landing.41 The directive says: “The situation in the Mediterranean area permits the possibility of attacks on Crete and the German and Italian bases in the Aegean See and on the Balkan Peninsula in the near future. These attacks will probably be supported by uprisings in the Western Balkan countries… I charge the Commanding General, Armed Forces, Southeast, with the defence of southeast area… This commander (of Gruppenarmee E) will be directly under me… The Army forces of our allies will be placed under the tactical command of the Commanding general, Armed Forces, Southeast”. The order of Hitler for the organization of the command in the German military zone poses some interesting questions. In point III.A.2.b., it is written that “for the area of former Serbia… the command will be headed by the Commanding General (in) Serbia”.42 Vardar Macedonia was a part of former Serbia and according to this directive the troops located there were commanded from Belgrade. This is so due to several reasons. On the one hand, Vardar Macedonia was the passage that connected the German occupation zone in Greece and occupied Serbia. On the other hand, the main opponents after 1941 were the guerrilla fighters’ organization of Drazha Mihajlovich and the communist resistance led by J. B. Tito whose actions spread throughout the whole territory of former Serbia** and required adequate counteractions from German side.

∗ In 1942 Serbia was declared by the Nazis as “Judenfrei” - “free of Jews” 37 There again 38 Nisim, G. Chivekat, koito... page 184 39 Baruh, Eli, Iz istoriata… p. 170 40 Arditi, Samuil, Chovekat, koito izigra Hitler. Ruse 2008, page 50 41 Tomashvich, Jozo, War and revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941 – 1945: occupation and collaboration, Stanford University Press , Stanford, California 2001, p. 70 42 Fuehrer Directives and Other Top-Level Directives on the German Armed Forces 1942 -1945, p. 56 - 57 ** After the events from April 1941 the leader of the Macedonian Communists Metodi Shatarov “joined the party to the Bulgarian Labor Party (communists) with the motive “one state – one party” (Istorija na

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Directive Nr. 48 from July the 26th 1943 gives a similar order for Greece. Point V.A.1 says: “The Greek area, occupied by German troops and by the Bulgarian 7th division, including the islands and the neutral zone in Thrace, was an operations area. The Commanding General, Armed Forces, Southeast has command authority in this area and has the right to delegate this authority to the Military Commander (of) Greece”.43 In a classified report of the German High Command from January the 5th 1943 regarding the visit of the Bulgarian Minister of War to its Headquarters, it states, that the right to command the army belongs to “The Commanding General, Armed Forces, Southeast is to request the Bulgarian High Command via the Military Attaché, Sofia for the measures which are considered necessary for the Bulgarian area. The Bulgarian High Command will then issue the necessary orders”.44 The danger of an Allied landing in the Balkans was one of the factors, on which Hitler’s anti-Jewish policy in the Region was founded. An example of this is a letter dated August 1943 from the head of group “Inland” to the SS Obergruppenführer and general of the Police Kaltenbrunner in which he asks for the increase of the pressure on the Bulgarian government in regard to the “Final Solution” of the Jewish problem and says: “The Reich Main Security Office has repeatedly suggested to the Ministry of foreign affairs to increase the pressure on the Bulgarian government in regard to the Jewish problem in order to find as soon as possible a solution that would lead to the evacuation of these Jews to the eastern territories,… because the Jews on the Balkans is becoming an increasingly important obstacle for the German troops in case of enemy landing in this area”.45 Under these circumstances the jurisdiction of Bulgaria over Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region was only nominal and this determined the fate of the Macedonian and Aegean Jews. The implementation of these German military operations in the Aegean region during this period is confirmed by the evidence, given under oath in an Israeli court by Benjamin Arditi, a Bulgarian Jew who moved to Israel after WWII: “In March 1943 a transport of Greek Jews passed through Sofia Rail Station. The salvation committee of the Jewish leaders started a campaign that aimed at stopping of the deportation of the Jews from the Aegean region by interceding with the Bulgarian authorities and foreign representatives, including the pope’s legate. The interceding with the administration did not lead to positive effect. The response was that Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region were territories, occupied by Germany, and the Germans could do whatever they wanted. Moreover, these lands were ”military zones” and the Germans implemented these actions for military reasons”. The Jewish leaders suggested: “If the Jews can’t be brought back to their homes, they should find a haven in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian authorities responded that they were not in control of the situation. The fate of the Jaws was in the hands of the Germans”.46 On February 22nd 1943 the chief commissar of JMC Belev and Theodor Dannecker, a representative of the German embassy, signed the famous “Agreement for the Initial Deportation 20 000 Jews”, written in two versions - in German and in Bulgarian. This document has been widely cited, analyzed and discussed; it has been given different interpretations. To create and ratify this document, Dannecker received special instructions from Eichmann in person.47 Two indisputable conclusions can be made about it. First, it was Makedonskiot narod, p. 307), but for these actions he was sentenced to death by J. B. Tito and the Yugoslav Communist Party regained the control over Vardar Macedonia. 43 Again there, p. 85 44 Again there, p. 78 45 Central State Archive. The document and its translation are uploaded on the website http://holocaustteaching.eu/ aiming at teaching of the Holocaust and at helping new generations to learn to live together 46 A copy of the sworn evidences of Benjamin Arditi were presented to the author by his son, Samuil Arditi 47 Video recording of the sitting № 97 (14.07.1961) from the trail of Eichmann. Copy from the author.

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signed by people, who had low positions of the state hierarchy, to be able to sign a valid bilateral agreement. Moreover, the JMC was not an independent structure, but was part of the Ministry of Interior. According to the basic principles of diplomatic relations, the German embassy was to be represented by Beckerle, not Dannecker. In his memoirs Dimitar Peshev describes the agreement in the following way: “This agreement, signed by an incompetent official, contrary to the Constitution, to the laws and the common morals and sense of humanity, could not have any binding power and was void according to the law. In fact it wasn’t at all an international contract, but a crude arbitrariness”.48 And second, in 1946 the Jew Mancho Rachmimov, a people’s prosecutor at that time, proved, that this document had been partly forged by deleting of the words “from the new Bulgarian territories Thrace and Macedonia” from the Bulgarian version: this was an attempt on the part of Belev to make the document valid not only for the Macedonian and Aegean Jews, but also for those of Bulgaria.49

The deportation of the Jews from the “new territories” in 1943

The decision of Aleksandar Belev to act without the approval of the Bulgarian government is evident from the fact that on the day after the agreement was signed, February 23rd 1943, he and his servants undertook a journey to the “new territories” during which they ordered the Bulgarian administration there to take part in the deportation of the local Jews. After he had signed the agreement and organized the deportation, he presented it to the government as a fait accompli. Through his deeds he supported the German pressure for the adoption on March the 2nd 1943 of decree Nr. 127 of the Council of Ministers for the deportation of “up to 20 000” Jews from the “liberated territories”. It is explicitly stated, that this happens “under an agreement with the German authorities”.50 The documents proves that the deportation in Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region was executed in coordination with the German embassy in Sofia and the parallel German authorities in the two territories, administered by Bulgaria, while the Bulgarian troops were under German command. The deportation campaign started at the night of March the 3d and March the 4th 1943 in the Aegean region, on 9th and 10th in “old” Bulgaria and on 10th and 11th in Vardar Macedonia. Jehuda Haim Perahia from Xanthi writes the following in his memoirs: “I was in Kavala, a Greek port on the Aegean Sea, when all Jews from Kavala, Drama, Seres, Xanthi and Gyumurgina (Komotini) were taken on the night of 3rd and 4th of March 1943 by the Germans and the Bulgarians”.51 It can easily be noticed, that the German troops were put in the first place with regard to the Jewish deportation. According to the testimony of Adolf Eichmann, given in 1961 during the trial against him in Israel, the Bulgarian army also took part in the detention of the Jewish population in the “new territories”.52 From my request to the Central Military Archive in Bulgaria I got the information that the V Bulgarian army, dispatched to Vardar Macedonia, 40% to 60% from the soldiers in it were of local origin.∗

48 Peshev, D., Spomeni, page 231 49 For more details about this falsification , see “Evreiski vesti” newspaper, issue 70 from 1946 50 Decree Nr. 127 of the council of ministers was not published in State Journal. The citing here is according to 50 Bar-Soar, Mihael, Izvan hvatkata na Hitler. Geroichnoto spasiavane na balgarskite evrei. Sofia 2011, pages 83 - 84 51 Gruss, Susy, Yehuda Haim Perahia, el ultimo sefaridi de Xanti; In: Aki Yerushalayim, Nr. 86, Yerushalayim oktobre 2009 52 Arendt, Hannah, E, Eichmann In Jerusalem, A Report On The Banality Of Evil, New York 1964, p. 162 - 194 ∗ The new Macedonian army was formed in the end of 1944 namely from Macedonian soldiers in the Bulgarian Army. Dressed in Bulgarian uniforms and headed by officers, educated in the spirit of the Bulgarian patriotism, they refused to obey the Yugoslav leadership. On December the 16th 1944 in Skopje a soldier revolt broke out,

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After the arrest of 4000 Aegean Jews, they were kept in transit camps for one or two days and were sent to Demirhisar, where they left for Simitly by narrow-gauge train. From there 2 500 were sent to Gorna Dzhumaia and 1 500 to Dupnitza where they stayed until the 18th and 19th of March. On March the 18th a train with 1985 Jews departed from Gorna Dzhumaia. On March the 19th a second train with 692 Jews departed from the town. In Dupnitza 1380 Jews from the Aegean region and 158 Jews from Pirot joined them. Both trains passed Sofia and arrived in Lom on 19th and 20th March. On 20th and 21st they were brought to four ships and sent via the Danube to Vienna and later – to Treblinka. Bishop Stefan gives details about the escort of the trains from Thrace in his memoirs written in 1950 during his exile in Banya: “In the spring of 1943 traveling to the Rila Monastery on the road Dupnitza – Kocherinovo I came across a train with Jews from the Aegean region – Kavala. What I heard there goes beyond the idea of horror and the conception for inhumanity. In stockcars old and young, healthy and ill, mothers with children and pregnant women, stuffed like sardines, standing and powerless cried for mercy … The train was guarded by Nazis, the doors were sealed, and the destination was the Danube and then Poland. Deeply grieved by what I heard, after I stopped at the Monastery, I sent a telegram to the monarch with the request to order the deported Jews to be transported through Bulgaria like humans, not like animals and to lighten their unendurable situation with the wish for them not to be sent to Poland”.53 Hans-Joachim Hoppe writes that during the transports, the Jews were escorted by Bulgarian policemen, but they worked “in conjunction with the Germans”.54 In one other place he notes that “although most of the security force was Bulgarian, German guards supervised the operation”.55 The author also claims, that the Bulgarian participation in the escort continued to Katovitze in Poland. From a German newsreel of these events, it becomes evident, that officials in German uniforms made the passport check and took the control of the deportation on the dock in Lom. The Macedono-Yugoslav communist sources from that time also confirm the participation of Germans in the deportation. For example, the newspaper of the Shtip communist party organization “Naroden Glas”, issue 1 from March 1943 writes: “the bloody German fascist and their Bulgarian servants gathered the Jews, with whom we had lived together for centuries”.56 We assume that the most complete information about the deportation in Vardar Macedonia should be present in the archives of Yad Vashem in Israel, known as “Holocaust and Heroism Memorial”. Here comes the great surprise. The data for Vardar Macedonia was published mainly in 1959 by the Macedonian author Aleksandar Matkovski, who also published it in his book “The Tragedy of the Jews in Macedonia”.57 Here is what Matkovski claims in the foreword. His information is published in the publication “Yad Vashem Researches for the European Jewish Disaster and Resistance” in Hebrew, English and Spanish.58 The information on the website of Yad Vashem came from this book.59 According to them, 7 300 Jews from Vardar Macedonia and the Morava Valley region were gathered in a

around 100 of those participating in the revolt were shot and 900 were captured and imprisoned in Skopsko Kale. Left for more than a month without water, food and blankets, almost all of them died from starvation and cold at the beginning of 1945. 53 Glasove v zastita na grazhdanskoto obstestvo. Protokoli na Svetia Sinod na Balgarskata pravoslavna carkva po evreiskia vapors (1940 – 1944), Sofia 2008, page 121 54 Hoppe, Hans-Joachim, Germany, Bulgaria, Greece… p. 53 55 Again there 56 Naroden Glas, issue 1, May 1943 57 Matkovski, Aleksandar, Tragediata na evreite od Makedonia, Skplje 1962, p. 102 58 Again there, p. 5 59 http://yadvashem.org/

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transit camp, placed in the building of the tobacco monopol in Skopje. From there the Jews were transported on three trains on 22nd, 25th and 29 March to Treblinka and annihilated. According to the data on the Yad Vashem website, on the 21st the Chief Commissar of JMC Aleksandar Belev, the German ambassador in Sofia Beckerle and the SS Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker arrived in Skopje to inspect the deportation in person. Yad Vashem does not mention any other German presence in this first deportation.60 In the photo archive of the same organization, under Nr. 213/42, a picture of the deportation from Skopje is kept without any additional information. The same photo is present at the Holocaust museum in the USA.61 Below it is written, that Aleksandar Belev was present during the deportation from Skopje in 1943. In addition, two German soldiers, guarding Belev, are to be seen on the photograph. This fact confirms the conclusion for the dependence of Belev on the Germans and for the German participation in this first deportation. We must note that this is the only deportation for which Yad Vashem claims Bulgarian participation consisted of 120 policemen. This number is to be found in the English and in the Spanish version of the website. At the same time Aleksandar Matkovski says that “for the first transport the ministry of Interior of Bulgaria sent one officer and 20 Bulgarian soldiers”.62 The difference of 100 people is shocking. Moreover, Matkovski himself does not mention the sources of this information. In the memoirs of Albert Sarfati, cited by him, it is evident that the first train was guarded by “20 Bulgarian soldiers and one officer”.63 A. Sarfati does not mention any Bulgarian participation in the guarding of the second train. About the second deportation of 2,402 Jews that took place on March the 25th the information of Yad Vashem says that: “two days earlier a special German military unit, commanded by sergeant Buchner arrived in Skopje in order to organize and guard the transportation.” For the same event A. Matkovski claims that the group consisted of 35 German soldiers commanded by Handrik: “The transport was accepted by the leader of the Spitzpolizei Handrik, who under the orders of Dannecker from Sofia departed from Nishka Banja with one compartment of 35 German soldiers and arrived in Skopje on the 23rd of March”.64 More interesting is the information about the third deportation of 2404 Jews that happened on March the 29th 1943. According to Yad Vashem: “the transport was also organized and guarded by German police” A. Matkovski cites German sources that give additional details and reject the allegation of Bulgarian participation in the deportation that came true with the first train on March the 22nd: “the most accurate information for the third transport is given also by the Germans. Under the orders of Dannecker from Sofia first compartment (that escorted the first train on 22nd) consisting of 30 German soldiers, a police guard unit from Nishka Banja, lead by the commander of the Spitzpolizei Buchner, departed for Skopje and arrived there around 23 pm. On March the 29th at the tobacco warehouse, the loading of 2040 Jews in the boxcars started at around 6 am”.65 It is evident that in the last two deportations, there was no Bulgarian participation according to the Yad Vashem data, and according to A. Matkovski, there was no Bulgarian participations in the three deportations. It is interesting to note that the Third Reich, in order to document the deportations, sent German filming teams to Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean region, which filmed the main moments of the deportation for the purposes of political propaganda. These frames show

60 http://yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/communities/monastir/liquidation.asp 61 http://ushmm.org/wlc/sp/media_ph.php?ModuleId=10007575&MadiaId=7252 62 Matkovski, A., Tragediata… page 86 63 Again there, p 89 64 Again there, p 90 65 Again there, p 90

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the guards of the trains, the loading of the cars and the sealing of the doors. The German presence is reflected in all of them and there are also soldiers with SS uniforms. The Holocaust researcher Jonathan Steinberg claims that the Jews from the “new territories” were surrendered to the SS.66 On the grounds of this film material, it can be noted that the Macedonian Jews were surrendered to the SS in Skopje. The initiative and the leading role of Nazi Germany in these events is confirmed by the German ambassador in Sofia Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, who was arrested in 1945 by the Red Army and sent to Lyubyanka prison near Moscow. There on March the 23rd 1945 Beckerle gave the following interesting testimony about the deportations: “Under the orders of Himmler that I received via telegraph I, together with Dannecker, authorized by the German government, via minister Gabrovski, achieved the deportation of the Jews from Macedonia and Thrace (14 000 – 15 000 people) who according to my demand were transported to Poland”.67 These confessions are of crucial importance because they show who had taken the initiative for the deportation and who achieved it. The Jews from the “new territories” between anti-Semitism and the salvation attempts

From the facts given above it is evident that the detained Jews were kept in the monopol building in Skopje respectively 11, 14 and 18 days. During this period no one from the Yugoslav communist resistance lead by J. B. Tito, part of which were also the Macedonian communist, lifted a finger to rescue them. Moreover, all three trains were escorted by 30-35 Germans. From the available photographic documentation it is obvious that the German soldiers were armed with rifles, not with automatic weapons. In this situation it wasn’t that hard for the Yugoslav communists to organize an action against one of the three trains that travelled towards Poland that travelled on the Yugoslav territory along the route Skopje – Hish – Lapovo – Zemun. A confidential report (Nr. 23) of the German consul in Skopje to the German embassy in Sofia from March the 18th 1943 gives interesting details about the attitude of the local population towards the deportation of the Macedonian Jews. It says that “the Macedonian population without exceptions admires the internment of the Jews”.68 This statement may have had some element of propaganda in it, but it describes the lack of actions from the side of the local inhabitants for the liberation of the detained Jews. The information of the German consul in Skopje is confirmed by the testimonies of Adolf Eichmann. In 1961 he says that: “the newly annexed territories, which were under military government and whose population was anti-Semitic”.69 Actions for the salvation of the detained Jews were undertaken mainly by Bulgarians. According to the Holocaust survivor Pepo Moshe Alaluf from Skopje, on March the 8th the secretary of the Skopje city council Zhelyazkov came into his office came and told him: “Run, because in the following days the Jews will be detained in a camp”.70 That same night P. Alaluf told this to his friends and they ran together towards Albania.

66 Steinberg, Jonathan, All Or Nothing, The Axis and the Holocaust 1941- 1943, New York 2002, p. 6 67 Taini diplomatii Tretiego reiha: Germanskie diplomati, rukavoditeli zarubezhnih voennih missii, voennie I politzeiskie attashe v sovetskom plenu. Dokumenti iz sledstvenih del. 1944 – 1955, Moscow 2011, p. 50 68 P.A.AA, Bestand: Inland II g, Bd. 183, Bl. 486309 – 486312. Copy, typewriting, German translation. Published according to: Vitka Toshkova and authors. Balgaria – svoenravniat saiuznik na Tretia raih. Sbornik dokumenti. Sofia 1992, p. 121 69 Arendt, H., Eichmann In… p. 162 - 194 70 Matkovski, A., Tragediata… page 65

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IMRO workers and some of the creators of the Bulgarian National Action Committees in Macedonia in 1941 Dimitar Chkatrov∗ and Dimitar Gyuzelev** made attempts to free the Hungarian Jew Ilesh Spitz the trainer of the Macedonian football team “Macedonia”.71, who was detained in Skopje. They visited the office of Cyril Drangov***, member of the Central Committee of the IMRO in Skopje, who got in touch with Professor Aleksandar Stanishev in Sofia. Thanks to their intervention, Ilesh Shpitz was taken off from the train traveling to Treblinka near Surdurlica. On August the 13th 1943 by order of the Skopje District director Raev, the coadjutor of the Skopje-Veles dioceses archimandrite Stefan Nikolov was relieved of his post. He was accused of baptizing the local Jew Ester Berah and her family after which he helped them leave Bulgaria. So the family of Ester Berah was saved. The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Church in a letter from August the 23rd 1943 backed up the actions of archimandrite Stefan Nikolov.72 In addition to these isolated cases, attempts for the salvation of the whole Jewish population in Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region were undertaken. In the Bulgarian Parliament, the deputy Petko Stainov asked the government on what grounds the deportation of the Jews in the “new territories” was done: “In this case, if it is all about the Jews from the Aegean Region and if they did not actually became Bulgarian citizens, they should have been sent to Greece, whose citizens they remain and should not be loaded on barges on the Danube”. The staff of the parliament ignored the inquiry of Petko Stainov. On March the 26th Petko Stainov proposed in the parliament changes to be made in the Regulations for citizenship in the territories, liberated in 1941 so that it could cover the whole population of Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region, including the Jews who lived there.73 A valuable source of information is record Nr. 4 from the meeting of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on April the 2nd 1943 where the words of Stefan, bishop of Sofia, are preserved: “For the Aegean Jews, as foreign, not Bulgarian citizens, any initiative (for their salvation) has proved to be a fruitless… any intercession hit on solid rock and the deported were soon sent to the Danube docks”.74 The words of Sofronii, bishop of Tarnovo, are given in the same document: “In Skopje, where I was at that time, all Jews were arrested, men, women, children and the sick, were imprisoned in a large tobacco warehouse. They were kept there under strict arrest for some time and were later sent to Poland… These deeds awakened major disturbance among the people. The spirits of the Bulgarian people were in defence of the Jewish minority. The Holy Synod with its fatherly concern interceded for them and until now has submitted several appeals. We shall write again… We shall intercede with

∗ Dimitar Chkatrov (1902, Prilep – 1945, Skopje). As a worker of the Macedonian Youth Secret Revolutionary Organization he was sentenced in 1927 to 10 years of prison, which he served in the prisons of Royalist Yugoslavia. He supported the Bulgarian authority in Macedonia during 1941 – 1944. In 1944 Chkatrov was brought to court by the new Yugoslav authorities and was killed in 1945 due to his Bulgarian convictions. ** Dimitar Guzelev (1902, Doiran – 1945, Skopje). Philosopher and worker of the Youth Secret Revolutionary Organization. Sentenced in 1927 to 20 years of solitary confinement, from which he served 5. He supported the Bulgarian authority in Macedonia during 1941 – 1944. Sentenced to death by the new Yugoslav authorities and killed in 1945. 71 Dnevnik, Skopje, 18.04.2008 *** Cyril Drangov, son of the legendary colonel from the Bulgarian army Boris Drangov. Member of the Central Committee of the IMRO, close associate of Ivan Michailov. In 1944 he withdrew with the Bulgarian troops from Skopje. In 1946 he committed suicide during a police blockade on his house in Sofia. 72 Shkarovskii, M. V., Bolgarskaia Pravoslavnaia Cerkov v godi Vtoroi mirovoi voini, In: Vestnik cerkovnoi istorii. 2009. Nr. 3-4 (15-16), p. 276 73 Official reports of proceedings in the XXV national assembly, IV RS, p. 1163 - 1165 74 Glasove v zastita na grazhdanskoto obstestvo. Protokoli na Svetia Sinod… , p. 79

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the government not to allow Bulgarian citizens to be deported in a foreign country under any circumstances”.75 Here is how Yehuda Perahia describes his salvation in his memoirs: “The commission for the gathering of the Jews did not come to take me to my house in Kavala. I stayed there for 15 days and on the advice of my lawyer, a Bulgarian, who transferred me in secret, I left for Chalcidice hidden in a boat”.76 This is an example for a real Bulgarian contribution for the hiding and the salvation of the Aegean Jews. From the above cited sworn evidence, given in Israel by the Bulgarian Jew Benjamin Arditi it becomes clear that in 1943 in Sofia, a Salvation Committee of the Jewish Leaders was active. Using their their relationship with the monarch, the committee tried to help the Aegean Jews, passing through Sofia. The data says that there were two small groups of Macedonian Jews, saved by the Bulgarian Authorities. The first consisted of 57 people, medics and pharmacist, and their families. The German consul in Skopje reports that this was done with the motive that “these Jews will be sent to the North Macedonian Towns Kumanovo, Vranja, Surdulitza and others where a pressing need of doctors is to be found”.77 The second group consisted of individuals, sentenced for different charges and interned in old Bulgaria. From them only 11 were sent back to Macedonia in April 1946 and were deported. The rest, among them, Salvador Levi, Issac Levi, Avram Sadicario, Isak Tadzher, and others were saved, by staying in Bulgaria.78 According to A. Matkovski the saved people were 65.79

Citizenship and deportation In order to analyze the deportation of the Jews from Macedonia and the Aegean Region we must evaluate how factors such as place of birth, place of residence and citizenship influenced the final result. The case of Marko Aaron Perez has already been mentioned. As a Jew, a Bulgarian citizen, who was arrested in Thrace during the campaign for the arrest of the Macedonian and Aegean Jews in 1943 but he was later released, because he had a Bulgarian passport.80 Similar was the fate of the brother of Harry Nasimov from Sofia, who was arrested in Xanthi together with the local Jews. He was released because he was Bulgarian citizen.81 We must mention Rafael Moshe Kamhi from Bitola, a famous IMORO leader, who had moved to Thessaloniki after WWI. In 1943 he was arrested by the German occupation force in Thessaloniki and he would have been sent to a concentration camp in Central Europe. With the help of Bulgarian organizations like the Macedonian Scientific Institute, the Ilinden Organisation* and King Boris in person a special courier provided him with a Bulgarian passport and he was released and saved.82

75 Again there p. 84-85 76 Gruss, S., Yehuda Haim Perahia, el ultimo sefardi de Xanti; In: Aki Yerushalayim, Nr. 86 77 Р.А.АА, Веstand: Inland ІІ g, Bd.183, Bl. 486309-486312. Photocopy, typewriting, пtranslation from German. Published by Vitka Toshkova and authors. Balgaria – svoenravniyat sayuznik na Tretiya raih. Sbornik dokumenti. Sofia 1992, p. 120 78 Sadikario, Samuel, Holokaustot ne predupreduva – zhiveam. Addendum to “Makedonsko sonce” newspaper, Skopje, 10.03.2006, p. 4 79 Matkovski, A., Tragediata… page 94 80 Bar-Soar, Mihael, Izvan hvatkata… , page 100 81 Again there p. 102 * Ilinden Organisation – Organization of the former participants in the Ilinden Uprising in 1903 against the former Ottoman Empire. 82 Kamhi, Rafael, Az voevodata Skender Bei, Sofia 2000, p. 183

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We have already mentioned, 4989 Jews born in Dobrudzha, lived in Bulgaria in 1934, Thrace and Macedonia – in the territories, administered by Bulgaria after April 1941. Because they were Bulgarian citizens none of them was deported. This fact is confirmed by the full lists of the Bulgarian Jews, who left for Israel in 1948-49 (kept in the Archives State Agency), a large group of whom were born in Macedonia and Thrace. The significance of the citizenship factor is obvious from the actions of another saviour of Bulgarian Jews – Vladimir Kurtev∗. As a member if the Central Committee of the IMRO his life was tightly bound with the fate of Macedonia and it was “more than natural for him to intercede in favour of the Jews of Skopje”.83 Despite this, in his conversation from 9th March 1943 with the Minister of the Interior Gabrovski, he defended only Bulgarian Jews, because he knew that Bulgaria had no full jurisdiction on Vardar Macedonia and the Jews who lived there were entirely under Nazi control. Foreign citizenship of sovereign states also played a vital role in the salvation of some of the Jews in the new territories. According to Yad Vashem, of all the Jews, detained in Skopje in 1943, 165 were released on order of the Bulgarian government because they were citizens of foreign states, mostly Catholic ones like Italy and Spain. If we look closer at the details of this information we will find surprising conclusions. In 1941 the Bulgarian administration found 160 Jewish families in Skopje, who were foreign citizens, or 263 people in total. Of them 28 families (circa 46 people) were Spanish citizens. In 1943 Spanish citizens became 74 in total – In three years, the number rose by 28 more Spanish citizens. Because, according to Gligor Todorovski, immigration from other countries was forbidden, we can draw the conclusion that someone from the Spanish embassy in Sofia gave them Spanish passports.84 That was probably Julio Palencia, Spanish ambassador in Sofia. Spanish sources say that during the WWII with the cooperation of Franco’s Spanish embassies issued between 40 000 and 55 000 Spanish passports for Sephardic Jews.85 The activities of Julio Palensia as a saviour of Jews in Bulgaria are reflected in some Spanish research.86 According to some sources he saved “around 600 people by helping them get Spanish incoming visas that he issues on his account”.87 Samuil Arditi writes the following in his memories: “Around 200 Spanish and Italian nationals were released. One citizen of Spain was brought down from the train in Sofia. After finishing lunch at our house and he told us his story. It was a touching story that took place in the tobacco warehouse in Skopje. Matilda Hoh evidenced to the 7th of the “Peoples Court”. “I was taken together with all Jews to the “Monopol” camp in Skopje. In the same camp was also my loved one, Miko Noiah. We got married there. Paitashev, a representative of JMC did not recognize our marriage, because I was a Serbian citizen and Miko – Spanish… The train for Poland was assembled. At the last moment the Spanish representative arrived and set us free”.88 The important thing in this case is that the Bulgarian authorities closed their eyes to it and freed people with Spanish passports, although they did not own such passports in 1941.

∗ Vladimir Kurtev (1888, Pleven – 1946, ?). Member of the CC of the IMRO. arrested on June the 8th 1946 in Sofia. We assume that he surrendered to Tito’s Yugoslav auithorities, where he was murdered. The detailed research of Samuil Arditi has proven the contribution of V. Kurtev for the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews. On May the 5th by a decision of the commission of Yad Vashem in Israel, he was proclaimed of Righteous among the Nations. 83 Arditi, Samuil, Chovekat, koito… , p. 61 84 Todorovski, Gligor, Novi podatoci... , p. 71 85 Rein, Raanan, Franco, Israel z los judios, Madrid 1996, p. 288 86 Diplomaticos espanioles ante el Holocausto. Visados para la libertad. Madrid 2008, p. 74 87 La Vanguardia, Madrid, 5 junio 2008 88 Memoirs from the years of the Holocaust – 1940-1943. Brief autobiography of Samuil Arditi, p. 13, (unpublished, the copy is held by author)

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Italy also made a big contribution for the salvation of the Macedonian Jews with Italian citizenship. In the above mentioned confidential report Nr. 23 of Witte, the German consul in Skopje, wrote to the German embassy in Sofia: “During the whole day of the internment, workers from the Italian embassy came very close to the concentration camp (the building of the tobacco monopoly in Skopje) and tried to talk to the Jews. From their behaviour, we can conclude that they have acted under the orders of their embassy because as of 11th of this month, the civilian population is forbidden from walking in the town. The Italian commandant in the rail station also tried several times together with one policeman to get into the camp”. Thanks to these actions Macedonian Jews with Italian passports were saved.89

The significant role played by the factor of citizenship is also shown by the fact that when on March the 9th 1943 King Boris ordered the minister of interior Gabrovski to free the Jews in Bulgaria, this order was valid only for the Jews with Bulgarian citizenship or who were citizens of sovereign states.∗ On the same day, the Aegean Jews were in the transit camps in Gorna Dzhumaia and Dupnitza. They left Bulgaria on the 20th and 21st of March, 1943 through Lom. The arrests of Macedonian Jews started one day after the issue of the royal order – in the morning of 11th of March 1943, the deportation itself ended on March the 29th. It should be stated that the struggle for the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews did not end with the royal decree of the 9th of March, 1943. King Boris needed a motive that he could give to Hitler in regard to his refusal for the deportation. This motive was military labour duty. This duty was mandatory for all individuals of Jewish origin, who were fit for military service, with no respect to their education or professional skills. In regard to this, Prime Minister Bogdan Filov wrote in his diary on April the 13th 1943 the following: “After that we discussed the Jewish problem. The King suggested that we should take the fit for work in labour groups in order to avoid deportation of Jews from the old territories to Poland”. 90 This move of King Boris was recognized by the German intelligence service in Sofia. In a report from May the 17th 1943 they informed the Ministry of Interior in Berlin of the following: “As an important argument against their deportation (of the Bulgarian Jews) to the east, King Boris emphasizes the need that they to be used for Bulgarian labour battalions… until now around 5 000 Jews have been mobilized… In conclusion it has to be said that the Bulgarian government uses the labour duty of the Jews too transparently and solely as a pretext against the deportation aimed by us”.91 In regard to this, the evidence of Adolf Eichmann given during the trail in Jerusalem in 1961 is especially valuable: “Italy and Bulgaria sabotaged German orders and indulged in a complicated game of double-dealing and double-crossing. saving their Jews by a tour de force of sheer ingenuity… The Germans were under the illusion that King Boris was primarily responsible for keeping Bulgaria's Jews safe, and it is reasonably certain that German Intelligence agents murdered him”.92

89 P.A.AA, Bestand: Inland II g, Bd. 183, Bl. 486309 – 486312. Copy, typewriting, German translation. Published according to: Vitka Toshkova and authors. Balgaria – svoenravniat saiuznik na Tretia raih. Sbornik dokumenti. Sofia 1992, p. 121 ∗ The order was given verbally; there was no written order from Tzar Boris III for the release of the Bulgarian Jews. Conclusions for his decisive role can be made based on report of a worker in the German embassy in Sofia from April the 5th 1943. The report states that the Minister of Interior “has received instructions from the highest level” which undoubtedly is the Tzar. (for more detail see Report by German Legation in Sofia to the R.S.H.A. in Berlin on the difficulties to deport Jews from Bulgaria, Social Cultural, Vol. XVIII, 1983, p. 98) 90 Filov, B. Dnevnik, record from April the 13th 1943 91 CSA, KMF, Nr. 246/24, 486341 92 Arendt, H., Eichmann In… p. 181 - 194

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As we have previously mentioned, the Macedonian and Aegean Jews as foreign citizens were not liable to labour duty. Because of this King Boris could not find a convincing argument to give to the Germans against the deportation requested and executed by Nazi Germany. In fact, the government in Sofia made some attempt and that’s how those 57 Macedonian Jews and their families, doctors and pharmacist, were released in Skopje. They were in the category highly skilled specialists that the country needed, although they were not under labour duty. On the other hand Bulgaria couldn’t give reasons for the need of the labour of the rest Macedonian and Aegean Jews. Moreover, the German request for deportation was connected with the official statement that the Jews with Yugoslav and Greek citizenship were about to be used as a labour force for the support of the German economy and military industry. Along these lines Eichmann writes that “the Bulgarians had no "understanding of the Jewish problem" whatever… it is doubtful that they knew what "resettlement in the East" actually signified”.93 During this period even the western media considered the information that the Jews from the “new territories” were deported to Germany in order to be used as a labour force as reliable. For example on March the 24th 1943 The New York Times wrote: “According to the current plans around the half of the deported (10 000) Bulgarian Jews will start working for the agriculture in Big Germany, one fourth will work as semiskilled workers and will be allowed to buy themselves off with “voluntary work” in the military industry in the heavily bombarded Ruhr region. The remaining quarter will be transported to the General Government (German occupied Poland) for labour “directly connected with the war”.94 Even as of 1941 in the Klodius-Popov agreement, Germany was granted its right on the “recruitment of workers for Germany” from the Yugoslav and Greek territories occupied by her and transferred to Bulgaria for administration. Of great importance is the fact that the deportation of the Jews who lived in the “old territories” was executed solely by the Bulgarian authorities. When the royal order to release the arrested Jews was given, they obeyed. In Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region the deportation was executed together with the German soldiers and policemen who had the leading role. They were subordinated not to Sofia, but to Berlin. This is the other reason why Macedonian and Aegean Jews were not saved. Moreover, in any attempt to adopt an independent Bulgarian position, Nazi Germany threatened Bulgaria by demonstrating that she had the real power over the “new territories”. In a report about the situation in Macedonia to the Abwehr∗ from 28.09.1943 it is stated: “The aspiration for independence aims at full autonomy of the Macedonian people in a federal Yugoslav state… Germany would hope for the realization of this idea only in case that the Bulgarian Army does not take part in the current war. We assume that in this scenario the Reich will not be committed with its political engagements towards Bulgaria and will be able to fulfil the aspirations of the Macedonians. Otherwise the realization will have to be accomplished within the boundaries of Bulgaria”.95 This document confirms that the fate of Macedonia at that time was entirely under German control and Hitler was even ready to use force against Bulgaria in order to further his interests. In this situation it is clear that although a royal order for the release of the Jews was given, it was valid only for his citizens. In his memoirs, Stefan, the bishop of Sofia, writes that in response to his request for humane treatment of the Aegean Jews to Boris III the King said that he gave the orders needed, “despite the fact that they were under the guardianship of the German High Command” and added also that they were “victims of Hitler’s military

93 Again there 94 The New York Times, March 24, 1943 ∗ Abwehr – the German military intelligence agency. 95 Tretiot Raih i Makedonia…, Skopje 1996, p. 98

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command”.96 In his memoirs deputy chairmen of the parliament Dimitar Peshev, who played a crucial role in the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews∗, writes: “I assumed that this happened because in these lands, not properly annexed to Bulgaria, Germany had a greater ability to influence and impose her decisions”.97 In support of this conclusion of Peshev is the evidence given by Eichmann in 1961: “Bulgaria could only be won (by Hitler) as an Axis partner by generous enlargements of its territories, and the Jews in these newly annexed areas were always denied the status of nationals; they automatically became stateless and therefore suffered the same fate as the refugees in Western Europe - they were invariably the first to be deported and liquidated”.98 In connection with this, the evidence of Liliana Panitza given to the People’s Court in 1945 is very interesting. She cites the words of Belev according to which Dannecker told him that Aegean and Macedonian Jews were their citizens. “They can deport them regardless of whether we want it or no”.99 Practically, Macedonian historiography comes to similar conclusion: “Regardless of the fact that the Bulgarian government had put the occupied territory under its power, this power was to some extent limited by Nazi Germany… This lack of independence in regard to the sovereignty of Bulgaria towards the occupied territories in Macedonia was revealed with the determination of the status of the Jews in Macedonia, who in contrast to the Jews who lived in Bulgaria were surrendered to the Germans and deported”. 100 The situation in the Aegean Region is similar. Hans-Joachim Hoppe notes that “the German authorities often had to intervene in Bulgarian occupation policy because so many measures aggravated the German position in Greece”.101 For the German authorities in Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region the Macedonian and Aegean Jews were their prisoners of war because of what they could solely determine their fate. All data evidences that not the place of birth or of place of residence but the citizenship played crucial role for the final outcome of the deportation. The reasons due to which the same Bulgarian public figures managed to save the Bulgarian Jews, but couldn’t save those in Macedonia and Thrace, were completely understood by the Jewish population and the relations towards them remained friendly. This fact is evident in the events from the end of August and the beginning of September 1944 when Nazi Germany tried to realize its plan of creating an independent Macedonia. In a secret telegram, sent on Sept. the 1st 1944 to the director of the military police of Army Group F in Belgrade, the following is written: “The workers of IMRO mention and clearly state that they will withdraw together with Fifth (Bulgarian) Army. We found out that the Jews from Sofia promised them safety”.102 Despite the fact that in September the Bulgarian army and administration started their retreat from Vardar Macedonia, the German occupation authorities there, established in April 1941, remained there. No sooner than the retreat of the Nazi troops in November 1944 the new Yugoslav rule was established.** This is an additional argument in support of the conclusion, that the real occupier of this territory was Germany.

96 Glasove v zashtita na grazhdanskoto obshtestvo. Protokoli na Svetiya Sinod… , p. 120 - 128 ∗ For his merits for the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews, Dimitar Peshev was proclaimed by Yad Vashem of Righteous among the Nations. 97 Peshev, D., Memoirs, p. 226. 98 Arendt, H., Eichmann In… , p. 181-194 99 The evidence of Liliana Panitza befor the People’s Court, 23.03.1945 100 Istorija na makedonskiot narod, v. 3, Skopje 1969, p. 286 101 Hoppe, Hans-Joachim, Germany, Bulgaria, Greece… p. 49 102 Tretiot Rajh i Makedonija…, Skopje 1996, p. 124 ** The main city of Macedonia – Skopje was liberated on November the 13th 1944.

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Anti-Semitism in front of the court of the History The confession of Beckerle, published in 2011, that he achieved the deportation of the Jews in Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region in 1943 by order of Himmler confirms the correctness of the sentence, given by 7th Compartment of the People’s Court. We must notice that through it Bulgaria “put… for the first time in the history of the civilized nations… a special law on the grounds of which the authors of the NPA and all other Anti-Jewish legislations and regulations were declared as criminals… With this political act that had a major international significance… the Anti-Jewish problem was placed even stronger and weightier in front of the Judge of international public opinion, international cultural history and the coming generations for universal discussion”.103 Those responsible for the Anti-Jewish outrages, with Aleksandar Belev at the head were prosecuted in front of the 7th section of the People’s Court. Among the many charges for which he was prosecuted, this was the most serious: “On March the 4th 1943 the whole Jewish population of the Aegean Region was deported – 4269 people and Macedonia – 7144 people, including old people, children, pregnant women and the sick, who were given only 20 minutes for baggage packing”.104 In the bill of indictment the Chief People’s Prosecutor Georgi Petrov said that “under the dictatorship of Hitler, the government of B. Filov started an inhuman persecution of the Jews”.105 After one month of sittings it was stated that “the deportation campaign (of the Jews) was more a German operation, rather a Bulgarian one”. The People’s Prosecutor of the 7th section of the People’s Court Eli Baruh wrote in 1960: “We proved and it was ascertained in the most indisputable way by the Supreme People’s Court… that the NPA and all other Anti-Jewish legislations were issued by the explicit insistence of the German government“.106 Here we should note the fact that the sittings of the 7th section started on March the 7th 1945 under the close scrutiny of the Allied Control Commission in Bulgaria, composed of Soviet, British and American representatives. None of them objected this decision. After Beckerle was released from Soviet captivity in 1955 he returned to Germany, but in 1959 was arrested with the charge that he organized the Holocaust in Bulgaria. On this occasion the Association of the Jewish Refugees in the UK announced, that one of the reasons for his detention was “on suspicion for having taken a leading part in the deportation of the Jews in Bulgaria”.107 The court saga in regard to the dependence of Bulgaria on Nazi Germany during the years of WWII found its final resolution on 09.05.2005. On this date, the Supreme Court of Israel with its seven sitting members delivered its judgment (with a majority of 6 votes for and one against). The judgment stated that the Bulgarian government during the Holocaust acted under the influence, suggestion and pressure of the Nazis.108

First attempts for substitution of the historical facts The facts revealed in this survey and the analysis made, say that the deportation of the Macedonian and Aegean Jews in 1943 was done under German initiative, in territories controlled by Germany with predominant German participation. The Bulgarian participation in the events was conditioned by the subordinated role of Bulgaria during this period and was

103 Baruh, E., Iz istoriata..., p. 5 104 Duma Newspaper, issue 26, Sofia, Feb. 1st 2011 105 Baruh, E., Iz istoriata..., p. 199 106 Again there, p. 7 107 AJR Information, Vol. XIV, Nr. 11, London, November 1959 108 Arditi, Samuil, Chovekat, koito… , p. 75 - 76

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directly led by the German trained Nazi agent Aleksandar Belev. Until the beginning of 1990 no one had ever doubted the leading role of Nazi Germany in these events. Samuil Arditi makes the following conclusion concerning this: “In Israel free disputes were held regarding the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews from the beginning of the nineteen fifties. Even the fiercest opponents of the King did not blame him for the death of the Jews from Macedonia and Thrace. Why? Because they also knew, that these lands were not really in Bulgaria. The Germans were the masters there, they did what they wanted. To blame the King for the deeds of the Germans is a big injustice”.109 In Bulgaria after 09.09.1944, there was an attempt undertaken to substitute the history of the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews by denying the role of King Boris III, of part of the Bulgarian deputies, of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and other prominent public figures. The main role for the salvation was attributed to BCP and to Todor Zhivkov personally. If they wanted to have any merits for the salvation there must had been someone saved. But the Jews from Macedonia and the Aegean Region were deported and annihilated in Treblinka. Because they could not draw any dividends for BCP from them, the fate of these people was not seriously examined in Bulgaria. Interest towards this was shown only in order to discredit the ruling government before 09.09.1944. Because of this, some facts were concealed. For example Dimo Kazasov says in his evidence before the People’s Court: “Any interaction (for the salvation of the Jews from the “new territories”) was impossible, because the measures were taken suddenly and were a surprise for everyone. When the Bulgarian people learned about them it was too late. The special trains had already arrived in Lom”.110 Ivan Momchilov, a member of the Kyustendil delegation that visited Dimitar Peshev on March the 9th 1943 that started the campaign for the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews, says: “We have never mentioned anything about these Jews because we never knew that they were in trains and tobacco warehouses”.111 These statements don’t completely fit in with the reality. As of March the 8th 1943, when the delegation departed from Kyustendil, their members may not have known that on March the 7th the accommodation of the Aegean Jews in Transit camps in Gorna Dzhumaia and Dupnitza had already begun. But they stayed there for almost two weeks. This happened under the observation of the local citizens – politicians, clerics and public people were aware of this fact. The stay of the Macedonian Jews in the Monopole building in Skopje was even longer – 18 days. The sources show that if not the whole community, that at least its famous representatives knew what was happening. Unfortunately the actions that were undertaken by various Bulgarian groups for the salvation of these Jews did not end with positive results due to the reasons given above. But because of the lack of positive result, these problems were not seriously researched until 1989. On the other hand the distorted version for the leading role of BCP and Todor Zhivkov in the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews was not accepted abroad. For example during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, the Deputy Chief Prosecutor Iakov Bar-Or, based on the original German documents and witnesses gathered by the judicial inquiry, stated: “(King) Boris was a hero. He absolutely blocked Eichmann and protected Bulgaria’s Jews… King Boris stood firm against deporting the Jews with Bulgarian citizenship. He was able to hold Eichmann off by allowing the deportation of 20 000 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace… King Boris died on August the 28th 1943. One report was that he had had a heart attack. Nazi documents quote doctors as saying he was poisoned. The finger pointed at Eichmann’s Gestapo men”.112 This

109 Again there, p. 62 110 Protocols of the People’s Court, 1945 111 Fund Nr. 278, a.u. 11, Kyustendil, IA 112 The News and Courier, Charleston, May 22, 1961. See also The Spokesman-Review, May 22, 1961 and others.

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fact made a historical gap that was taken by Yugoslav and Greek publications on the question, some of which are emphatically negative against Bulgaria.

The contemporary substitution of the historical facts After the declaration of the independence of Republic of Macedonia in 1990, some spheres in Skopje, especially the mass media, started initially to conceal the leading role of Nazi Germany in these events. After that, an informational blackout was imposed over the role of the Germans and the version that the sole perpetrator of the deportation of the Aegean and Macedonian Jews in 1943 was Bulgaria was proposed. In that way, they tried to absolve the Nazis of their guilt and to change the history of the Holocaust. The processes that are taking place in modern Macedonia can be clearly revealed by the memorial plaque put in front of the tobacco Monopol in Skopje that was used as a transit camp in 1943, and which has been replaced three times so far. After the establishment of the new Yugoslav rule in 1944, the first plaque was mounted. It was written in the newly created Macedonian alphabet∗, not in the official language, but in the local dialect. The text said that “in this building the German-Bulgarian Fascist occupiers from March the 11th to March the 20th 1943 imprisoned and cruelly tortured over 7 200 Jews from Skopje. Over 7 000 of theme were killed in German concentration camps“. In the 1960s the plaque was removed by the Yugoslav authorities and replaced with a new one, with the same text, but written in the official Macedonian language. In 2004, the plaque was replaced with a new one, this time the initiators of the Holocaust in Macedonia were not mentioned. The rationalization of the events shows that the year 2000 seems to be decisive in regard to the attitude of R. Macedonia towards the deportation of the Jews in March 1943. At the beginning of the same year, during the International Holocaust Forum in Stockholm, the Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov asked Bulgaria to be given special recognition for not dispatching its Jewish citizens to their deaths during the WWII. Jewish organizations from Macedonia and Greece objected to this position and said that such a statement is a distortion of the truth. Because against the statement that Bulgaria managed to save 50 000 Jews, many facts exist, that can’t be denied by anyone, even by the Bulgarian scholars or historians would be better, that “under Bulgarian leadership” 7 148 Jews from Macedonia were deported to Treblinka and destroyed in 1943. Only around 200 Macedonian Jews survived the Genocide which means that 98% of the Jewish population during this period was destroyed. The statements of Petar Stoyanov in Skopje were qualified as “inaccurate and dangerous”. At that time Skopje evaluated the property of the massacred Jews, which added up to a total of 16.5 million USD. The Jewish community in Macedonia insisted that this amount was to be returned and humanitarian and educational projects with the aim of preventing the repetition of such genocide. As we see, these high-minded aims are mixed with half-truths (because saying half of the truth is the beginning of a lie). It is a fabrication that Bulgaria received 300 Reichsmarks for each “Jewish head” sent. On February19, 2000 the Jewish community in Macedonia sent a letter to Yad Vashem in Israel in which they requested that it should reconsider the role of King Boris the Third, because he participated in the biggest genocide in the history of mankind. This was confirmed by 10 000 archive units, that were deposited in the in the Archives of Macedonia. In this letter they also said that a new generation in democratic Bulgaria had been born that would abrogate the decision of the former President Zhelio Zhelev for the rehabilitation of the war criminals like Bogdan Filov, prime minister of Bulgaria during the years of Fascist Bulgaria. ∗ The Macedonian alphabet, known also as “Konevitza”, was created in the end of 1944 by Blazhe Koneski and is based on the Serbian “Karadzhitza” alphabet with slight graphical changes. It was approved by the Macedonian Government with a resolution from May the 16th 1945.

29

The decision to remove the memorial of King Boris the Third in Israel on July the 17th 2000 was interpreted as a big victory for Macedonia. Skopje says that justice, although slow, is still reachable because Fascist Bulgaria during the time of King Boris III was responsible for the death of 11 000 Jews, deported from Macedonia and Thrace during the WWII. During the same year the government of Macedonia adopted the law for denationalization.113 Its article 66 makes restitution for the property of the Jews from Macedonia, who lost their property as a result of forced deportations to the Fascist concentration camps and did not survive the Holocaust and have no heirs. According to article 68, the property of those individuals is entrusted to the Macedonian Jewish Holocaust Fund. The Fund is managed by a board of managers, consisting of an equal number of representatives of the government of the Republic of Macedonia and the Jewish community. The activity of the fund is determined in art. 69 – the building of a Holocaust Home of the Jews of Macedonia and also other activities, connected with the commemoration of the Holocaust of the Jews from Macedonia.. In 2002 the Macedonian government adopted a special decision for the foundation of the Macedonian Jewish Holocaust Fund, in which its structure has been described.114

In 2006 the president of Macedonia Gjorge Ivanov, a lecturer at the Law Faculty of the Skopje University, in co-authorship with Svetomir Shkarich, published the textbook “Political Theories – Antiquity”. In it G. Ivanov expressed the following anti-Semitic statement: “An Anti-Semite is a person who hates Jews more than necessary”.115 The public in our western neighbour was shocked by such a statement and later “Shpitz” newspaper asked the question: How much does someone have to hate the Jews and how is it possible for the president of Macedonia and a lecturer at the Law Faculty to understand anti-Semitism in this way?116 Moreover, Macedonia has declared itself as an opponent of the “anti-Semitism” – that is hatred of the the Jews. This behaviour of Gjorge Ivanov led to a cooling of the relations between VMRO-DPMNE and the Jewish community. In the same year, a campaign with the insistence Bulgaria to apologize for death of 7 200 Macedonian Jews was launched.117 In this way, a moral compensation of Bulgaria was requested. The question was asked: “Do those, who destroyed a part of the Macedonian people, 7 200 Jews, have the moral courage to come and to pay their last respects to the relics, to the ashes of those, who they sent to death? This is what we expect from the democratic authorities in Bulgaria… Only from the Misrahi family, the Bulgarians sent 81 members to Treblinka”. Again the lie that Bulgaria received 300 Reichsmark per deported Jew was imposed. In Skopje it was stated, that in contrast to the facts, the Bulgarian state has made several attempts as part of a diplomatic offensive during the last years to free itself from this unpleasant part of its history. The decision of the Supreme Court of Bulgaria for rehabilitation of “the first people in the Fascist regime” was criticized. The question as to where the property of the Macedonian Jews has gone has been raised. They stated that after several years of hard work with the help of experts from the National Bank of Macedonia in 1998, based on the archives that they managed to research, they determined that the property looted from the Jews can be evaluated to 16.5 million USD in current prices. In 1997 the Jewish community made the decision to bring this property back to Macedonia.

113 State Journal of the Republic of Macedonia, issue 43, Skopje, 20.05.2000 114 State Journal of the Republic of Macedonia, issue 28, Skopje, 26.04.2002 115 Ivanov, Gorge I Shkarik, Svetomir, Politichki teorii – antika, Skopje 2006, p. 143 116 Shpitz, Skopje, 14.02.2011 117 Utrinski Vestnik, Skopje, 16.10.2006

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In 2006 the Parliament of Macedonia declared March the 11th (the date of the arrest of the Jews from Vardar Macedonia, later deported to Treblinka) as one of the important dates for Macedonia. The first visit of the president of Macedonia to Israel took place on October, 2009, during this visit, Gjorge Ivanov had organizational meetings with representatives of the Macedonian Jews, settled in Israel. At a similarly well staged meeting Rashel Levi, born in Skopje, stated that “the Jews in Macedonia suffered at the hands of the Bulgarians”.118 Satisfaction at the removal of the memorial of King Boris III in Israel was expressed at this meeting. This fact proves that with the airing of these points abroad, Macedonia is trying to internationalize the problem. The Macedonian emissions of Deutsche Welle Radio can be described as a new success in this direction. In a report by Kostadin Delimitov from the Macedonian redaction of the same German State Media from 29.01.2010, which was headlined “Bulgarians deport Macedonian Jews” it was stated: “On March the 10th 1943 the Bulgarian occupation corps starts the deportation of 7 144 Jews from Vardar Macedonia. Only around 200 people survived. From those 7 200 Jews deported to Treblinka during the WWII, no one survived. 65 years later a small Jewish community exists in Macedonia, consisting of 250 people”. Later this campaign to make the Holocaust solely Bulgaria’s fault and absolving the Germans of participation in the deportations of 1943 was transferred to the Bulgarian service of Deutsche Welle. In a report from 17.12.2010 it was stated that: “Macedonia does not forget its Jews. The story of the 7 148 Jews that the Bulgarians deported on March the 11th 1943 to the Treblinka death camp will be the focus of the Memorial Centre of the Holocaust, that will be built in the former Jewish quarter in Skopje… The Bulgarians want us to remember the salvation of their Jews and to forget the killings of the Jews in Macedonia. With this they want to forget the responsibility for the killing of the others. We have a situation where they will have to face two things that their history will have to observe more complexly”. Later the same German media, again concealing the German participation in the tragic events in Macedonia in 1943, broadcast the opinion of Emi Baruh: “Official Bulgaria never told us words, with which to ask forgiveness∗ from the descendants of the few surviving Jews of Thrace and Macedonia for this, that the deportation of the 11 363 people, who lived in those territories, administered by Bulgaria, was organized and executed by the Bulgarian Army, that Bulgarian officers guided this tragedy with the dose of cruelty typical for such “campaigns”, that Bulgarian soldiers looted the homes of the Jews in Thrace and Macedonia and participated in the plundering of their property”. In 2011 new falsifications against Bulgaria were made. In “Utrinski Vestnik” was stated that in 1943 in Bulgaria there was a “Minister of Jewish matters”.119 And if until now the role of Nazi Germany was concealed, now for the first time the blame for the deportation was imposed solely on Bulgaria: “For the Jewish community in Macedonia, the Bulgarian Fascist regime is the only culprit for the deportation of 11 000 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace, for which Bulgaria received 300 Reichsmarks for each person sent”. In the same issue from 17.07.2011 it was written: “in 1943 the Bulgarians who occupied Macedonia (and protected their Jewish citizens) gathered and deported 7 148 Macedonian Jews to the Treblinka death camp”.120

118 Vecher, Skopje, 22.10.2009 ∗ This statement is also not correct. In its issue from 28.03.2008 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz cites the words of the Bulgarian president Georgi Parvanov, said during his visit in Israel: “Bulgaria… does not evade the responsibility for the fate of more than 11 000 Jews, who were deported to the death camps from Thrace and Macedonia”. 119 Utrinski vestnik, Skopje, 10.03.2011 120 Utrinski vestnik, Skopje, 17.07.2011

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In their aspirations to blacken Bulgaria some groups in Macedonia sometimes make diplomatic mistakes. For example, on the eve of the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Skopje the organizers stated that the Jews from Macedonia were deported and annihilated in the “Polish camps”. On this occasion the Polish ambassador in Skopje Karol Bahura held a press conference and said that “This term is insulting for the Polish people and calls for more truthfulness, journalistic ethics and historical sensitivity when writing about the concentration camps and for the use of the phrasing “German Nazi camps, founded on the territory of occupied Poland”, adopted by UNESCO”.121 In 2011 the Republic of Macedonia provoked an international scandal in the European Parliament by the filming of the anti-Bulgarian film “Third Halftime”, in which, in the spirit of the falsifying of the History of the Holocaust in Macedonia during the last 20 years, examined above, guilt is thrown at Bulgaria. The media in Macedonia falsified a statement of Doris Pak, the chairman of the Education and Culture commission, by attributing statements against the Bulgarian representatives in the European Parliament to her that she has never spoken. In an article in “Vecher” newspaper stated “Doris Pak scored again for “The Third Half”” the following words have been attributed to her: “Those are people, who don’t understand anything from Europe. They should stop with this, because what would we do in Germany, if we always have to say “no” and to protest against all films, that concern the Third Reich. They should not react like this, this is not a cultural way of behaviour and I think that their reactions should not be given much attention”.122 From the office of Doris Pak this information was formally rejected. We should have in mind that the film „The Third Halftime“ is a Macedono-Czech co-production and with a resolution of the Macedonian government, the film was proclaimed as “a film of a national interest”. The historical background of the film is in 1942 when most parts of Vardar Macedonia were administered by the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the football team from Skopje “Macedonia” had to play with “Levski” Sofia in the Bulgarian state championship. “Macedonia” had an advance with 2:1 but “Levski” was given a penalty kick. Here come two big lies: the players from “Macedonia” stopped the game and left the stadium and the coach of “Macedonia” Ilesh Shpitz, who was a Jew, was deported by the Bulgarians to the German camps. The director of the film Darko Mitrewski conceals the fact, that this football game started with a scandal, because the players of “Macedonia” raised their hands in the Nazi salute, but the players of “Levski” refused to do so and were fined with 10 000 leva by the Football Federation. They also concealed the fact that the coach of “Macedonia” Ilesh Spitz was saved from deportation due to the quick reaction of the former member of the Central Committee of IMRO Cyril Drangov, from whose lawyer’s bureau in Skopje the president of FC “Macedonia” Dimitar Chkatrov and the member of the managing committee Dimitar Guzelev called professor Aleksandar Stanishev in Sofia and after his intervention Ilesh Spitz removed from the train for Treblinka. Moreover, after a publication in 2008 in “Dnevnik”, the newspaper imposed news blackout on this topic.∗ It has not been mentioned in the film that

121 Vecher, Skopje, 07.03.2011 122 Vecher, Skopje, 29.11.2011 ∗ In a report in “Dnevnik” newspaper from 18.04.2008 for the first and last time, it was acknowledged that the chairman of the FC “Macedonia” was Dimitar Chkatrov and that Dimitar Gyuzelev was a member of the board of managers. They took immediate actions for the liberation of Ilesh Spitz after his arrest and he was brought down from the train near Surdulitza. The recollections of Liliana Damovska, who knew Ilesh Spitz very well, were published: “He never complained about the thing that happened to him, but he was sincerely and lastingly thankful to the people from Skopje, who saved his life. He kept silent, because he probably knew who saved his life and under what circumstances”. “Dnevnik” reports also that “The saviors of Spitz, the chairman of the club Dimitar Chkatrov and the member of the board of the directors Dimitar Guzelev were proclaimed as national traitors in 1945 and were shot”.

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until April 1941 the authorities in Yugoslavia prohibited the club from calling itself “Macedonia” because the whole territory of modern Macedonia was renamed by them as the “Vardar Banovina” and that after the arrival of the Bulgarian administration the use of the name “Macedonia” was allowed. In order to film this historical falsification, the Film Fund of R. Macedonia supported the project with 500 000 Euros in 2010 and at the end of this year the government of Nikola Gruevski granted another 1 000 000 Euros for the filming. An additional 650 000 Euros were granted by the Holocaust Fund of R. Macedonia and other sponsors so the final budget of the film became 2 150 000 euro. The participation of the director Darko Mitrevski in the falsification of history and more specifically of the history of the Holocaust in Macedonia by concealing the role of Nazi Germany is evident from a couple of articles, written by him, published in “Nova Makedonija” newspaper in 2011. For example Mitrevski writes the following: “On March the 11th, at five o clock in the morning, Bulgarian military and police cordons blocked the streets of Skopje, Bitolia and Stip”, after this he repeats the falsified history, familiar to us, and does not even mention the Nazi participation in these events.123 The distortion of the history of the Holocaust in Macedonia is also being done at the present time. For example on November the 27th 2011 the BBC aired a documentary about the “memoirs” of Jamila Kolomonos from Bitolia, who was presented as a Holocaust survivor. In the interview she speaks only of Bulgarian participation in this anti-Jewish campaign. The paradox in this case is that she shows a picture of the deportation on the Bitolia rail station, where German soldiers are to be seen. She shows also a picture of her father, where it is written in English that “her father was taken by German soldiers”.∗ Such manipulation should not be a surprise for us, if we have in mind the fact that Jamila Kolomonos is a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party, a member of the Central Committee of the Macedonian Communist Party, where she works in the personnel department. She has been decorated with the Order of Brotherhood and the Unity of the Yugoslav people with a golden garland and that she has always worked in support of the Yugoslav falsifications of historical events against any appearance of Bulgarian self-awareness in Macedonia. The facts given hereby unequivocally show the Nazi pressure and the leading role of Germany in the organization and the implementation of the deportation of the Jewish population in Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region in 1943. The ascription of the whole guilt of the deportation on Bulgaria is a distortion of the History of the Holocaust and an indirect attempt to free Nazi-Germany from its responsibility, which is a crime and can have dangerous consequences.

The processes that are taking part in modern Macedonia have been analyzed by serious foreign observers. For example, the Israeli journalist Sam Vaknin writes the following in his article “Macedonia's Hopeful Holocaust”: “Macedonia boasts one of only four major Holocaust memorials in the world… For a country of 2 million people with fewer than 130 Jews and no tourism to speak of this is a curious circumstance… The Holocaust Museum almost fully funded with the proceeds from the sale of denationalized properties of liquidated Jews, hastily declared heirless by the Macedonian authorities is the Macedonian way of bribing the Jews to help them with their economic and geopolitical dire straits”.124

The information given above clearly shows the trend, to distort the history of the Holocaust in Macedonia and tries to conceal the role of Nazi Germany, which is a crime and can have dangerous consequences. According to Maxim Benvenisiti, the chairman of the Jewish organization “Shalom” In Bulgaria, “the truth has to be said, so that no one will be 123 Nova Makedonia, Skopje, 26.3.2011 ∗ In the mentioned album the words “father was taken by German soldiers” can clearly be read. 124 Vaknin, Sam, Macedonia's Hopeful Holocaust, В: Global Politician, October 3, 2011; http://www.globalpolitician.com/26781-macedonia-holocaust-jews-anti-semitism

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able in the future, when lots of things will be forgotten, to tell this history in a different way. And history says that the Bulgarian people are not guilty for what happened”.125 One of the founders of parachute troops of Israel and winner of the first medal ever issued for bravery, Colonel Shmuel Raphael, on this occasion said: "Eichmann was the master outside the borders (of Bulgaria, author's note) - in the occupied territories neither the Bulgarian king nor the Bulgarian government had the necessary power. Therefore, against the monarch and the people and the army - there can be no charge for the fate of the Aegean Jews. Such an accusation is ridiculous and ungrateful ".126

APPENDIX

125 Interview for “Focus” news agency, 19.11.2007, http://www.focus-news.net/?id=f7810 126 The interview was published in the official website of HM King Simeon II of 05.04.2011; http://www.kingsimeon.bg/archive/viewcategory/id/152

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The first page of the German original of the Convention Klodius - Popov from 24 April 1941, whereby the former Yugoslav territories were ceded by Germany to

Bulgaria and they are areas whose final status will be decided after the war. Central National Archive (CNA).

35

Second page of the German original of the Convention Klodius - Popov, which guarantees the presence of German forces in Vardar Macedonia and sending

workers to Germany. CNA.

36

The Wannsee List - German statistics from January 1942 of the Jews in Europe, scheduled for destruction. In the column "Bulgaria" there are only 48,000 Jews, and this is the number within the borders of Bulgaria until April 1941. In 1942, the total Jewish population in Bulgaria, Vardar Macedonia and the Aegean Region is 58,876, of which 45809 people

living in the old boundaries, and 3508 are in the area of Bitola, 4918 in Skopje and 4641, in the Aegean region. This data shows that Germany did not recognize the Bulgarian jurisdiction over 8426 Macedonian and 4641 Aegean Jews (a total of 13067 people).

37

Message from the General Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Confessions to the Bulgarian Red Cross to assist the convoy of 200 Jewish children from Hungary and

Romania, for Palestine. Sofia 13.06.1942. CNA.

38

A map published in the German newspaper "Das Reich", Berlin, 18.10.1942. According to it,

Vardar Macedonia and Thrace are not part of Bulgaria, but are only "under Bulgarian administration".

Part of the Benjamin Arditi’s testimony under oath. According to this testimony, Vardar Macedonia and Thrace in 1943 were German operational areas.

39

Parts of the U.S. military translation of Directive № 47, marked as top secret and signed by Adolf Hitler. The document states that the Nazi armed forces in the region are under the direct command of Hitler and the troops of the allies of Germany remain under German tactical command. The military operations in former Serbia are

headed by the German General in Belgrade.

40

Parts of the U.S. military translation of Directive № 48, marked as top secret and signed by Adolf Hitler. The document states that the Greek zone, occupied by

German troops and Bulgarian seventh division, including the islands and the neutral zone in Thrace is an area of German military operations. The commanding general of the armed

forces "Southeast" has the command authority in this area and has the right to delegate this authority to the German military commander in Greece.

Some of the memories of Yehuda Haim Perahia from

Xanthi on the deportation of the Aegean Jews.

41

Document № 213/42 from the Yad Vashem photo archive about the deportation of Jews from Skopje, 22 or 29 March 1943. With the hat, in the middle of the picture, is the Commissioner

for Jewish affairs Alexander Belev. On the left there are two Germans soldiers.

Document № 213/45 from the Yad Vashem photo archive for the deportation of the Macedonians Jew. In the middle, you see a Bulgarian policeman and on the right side of the

photo – two German soldiers (in a square and extended in the lower right corner).

42

A frame from German newsreel about the deportation of the Macedonian Jews in 1943. German soldiers armed with rifles, close the car door, full of Jews.

On the wagon are the Cyrillic letters БД(Ж), the abbreviation of the Bulgarian railway.

A frame from a German newsreel about the deportation of the Macedonian Jews in 1943. A German soldier (right) in a SS uniform, watched the departure of Jews from Monopol and

cargo in Skopje railway station.

43

A frame from German newsreel about the deportation of the Macedonian Jews in 1943. German officers and soldiers from SS at the Skopje railway station, reviewing the

lists of deported Jews before the departure of the train, destined for Treblinka.

German newsreel about the deportation of the Aegean Jews, 20 or 21 March 1943. A German officer reviews the documents of the Jews deported from

Lom’s port, at the hour of boarding the boat, for Vienna.

44

German soldiers and officers, controlling the deportation of the Aegean Jews, Port of Lom, 20 or March 21, 1943.

A photo of the football match in Skopje between the team "Macedonia", Skopje and "Levski",

Sofia, in 1942. The players of "Macedonia" (left), with hands raised in a fascist salute. Players of "Levski" (right), refuse to make a fascist salute, so are fined 10,000 lv. by the

Bulgarian Football Federation.

45

The deportation of Macedonian Jews (probably in Shtip) in 1943. Among the Bulgarian police, there is a German soldier. In the far left of the car,

there is also another German soldier.

The same photo, shown on the Macedonian national television MKTV Sat. The German soldiers have been purposely cut so only the police in Bulgarian uniform are seen.

46

Some of the memoirs of Ekzarh Stefan, written during his exile by the communist authorities. Here he testifies that the deportation train of the Jews from the Aegean was kept in Dupnitsa

by the Nazis. CNA.

Another part of the memoirs of Ekzarh Stefan, in which he quotes the words of King Boris III that the deported Jews are under Hitler's direct military command. CAN.

47

An article from the newspaper "The New

York Times "(03.24.1943) where information on the deportation of the

Jews from the "New lands" Thrace and Macedonia is published. According to German plans, about one half of the

deported Jews will begin agricultural work in Germany, a quarter as semi-skilled workers may be redeemed as

"volunteers" in the military industry in the heavily bombed Ruhr. The fourth part of those remaining will be transported to

the General Government [Poland occupied by the Germans] to work

directly related to the war

48

A certificate, issued by the commander of Salonika-Aegean region, and signed by the Bulgarian royal official, in relation to the removing of the Jewish Star № 41 367 of Rafael Mois Kamhi, Bulgarian Jew, to leave Salonica for Bulgaria. Thessaloniki, April 2, 1943.

CNA.

49

An official note issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Confessions for the "Contributions to the Bulgarian nation" by Rafael Kahmi Mois, a Jew from Salonika, to

expedite his transfer in Bulgaria and arrange a residence in Sofia. 1943. CNA.

50

Dimitar Tchkatrov (1) and Dimitar Guyzelev (2) - saviours of Ilesh Shpitz. In the picture above, as prisoners during the Skopje student trial in 1927. In the picture below, as prisoners

and condemned to death in 1945 in Tito's Yugoslavia.

51

The newspaper "Dnevnik", 18.04.2008 - the only

publication in the Republic of Macedonia, discovering the

truth about Ilesh Shpitz’s saviours and reporting on their

execution in 1945.

52

Message from the Association of the Jewish Refugees in England for the arrest of Bekerle in 1959, with the

accusation that he "had taken a leading part in the deportation

of Jews in Bulgaria".

An article in the newspaper "Daily News” (28.05.1960)

about Bekerle’s arrest for his role in the deportation of the

Jews of Macedonia and Thrace

53

The first plaque (written in dialect) and the second one at the building of Monopol in Skopje, "speaking" of the "German-Bulgarian fascist occupiers".

54

The current plaque on the building Monopol in Skopje, the beginning of the intent to ignore and forget the memory of the German fascist occupiers.

Anti-Semitism in the Republic of Macedonia today. A report by the Macedonian television A1, on the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Bitola.

55

An article of "The Spokesman-Review" from May 22, 1961. It cites the

words of the Deputy Attorney of Israel Gen.

Yakov Bar-Оr that based on the original German

documents and testimonials collected during the

Eichmann trial, it can conclude that the Bulgarian king Boris was a hero, he

completely blocked Eichmann and protected

the Bulgarian Jews. King Boris died on August 28,

1943, and a German report says he died of a heart

attack. The Nazi documents cite doctors that say he was poisoned by the Gestapo.

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EPILOGUE

By this presentation of the true facts, we see that the author Spas Tashev has fully achieved his purpose in presenting the historical truth objectively. Against an anti-Bulgarian cacophony of insults, slanders, false myths and falsifications of history, he built a wall of concrete. With dispassionate logic and calmness, Spas Tashev has reviewed dozens of historical documents. In the spirit of our digital age, he has added not only archival photographs, but images from German newsreels. The author has shown that during the Second World War, Thrace and Macedonia were not an integral part of Bulgaria, but were in effect under direct German control. The Jews who lived there were not Bulgarian nationals, but Serbian and Greek citizens, so they belonged to the German Reich and Bulgaria could not intervene on their behalf. With this, the accusations against Bulgaria do not make sense. However, as a Jew, I believe that Bulgaria should apologize for the physical participation of young people in the deportation to the Nazi camps, in cooperation with German troops. But I, as a witness to these facts, emphasize that nobody, no Bulgarian leader has the right to assume, the responsibility for the Holocaust in Vardar Macedonia and Thrace in 1943 in the name of the Bulgarian people.

Samuel Ardittis Israel

Samuel Ardittis was born in Sofia in 1935. He immigrated to Israel in 1949 and in 2008 published the book "The man who tricked Hitler. King Boris III, rival or friend of Bulgarian Jews." Samuel Ardittis is a great Israeli and Bulgarian patriot. He was awarded with the honorary degree of the Twig of Saffron Gold by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria Nikolay Mladenov for his contribution to the appointment Vladimir Kurtev as “righteous among the nations” by Yad Vashem. He speaks Bulgarian, Hebrew, English and Ladino fluently.

Spas Tashev was born in Bulgaria in 1967 in the family of settlers from Macedonia. He is author of numerous articles and academic books. In 1998 - 2003 he was vice president of the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad. From 2006 to 2009 he was founder and first director of the Culture and Information Centre of the Republic of Bulgaria in Skopje. He was awarded a special diploma of the Library of the City of Skopje for his contribution to the success of the cultural cooperation between Bulgaria and Macedonia. Currently he is an advisor to the Political Cabinet of the Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Simeon Dyankov. He speaks Bulgarian (including the Macedonian literary norm), Spanish (and Ladino or Judeo-Spanish), Portuguese, English and Russian.

For contacts with the author: lihnida@abv.bg