Rettung, Überleben oder Vernichtung? Geschichtspolitische Kontroversen über Bulgarien und den Holocaust
Salvation, Survival, or Annihilation? Bulgaria, the Holocaust, and the Politics of History

Summary/Abstract: Abstract: Since the mid-1960s, “the Salvation of the Bulgarian Jews“ in the Second World War prominently features in Bulgaria’s official politics of history. Constructed by the Bulgarian Communist Party in order to enhance the international image of the country and proving to be quite successful, after 1989 this myth was reinforced in the context of the country’s applications for membership in the Council of Europe, NATO and the European Union. Soon after the systemic change, however, national and international actors emerged who questioned the core of the „salvation“ topos: While the Jews on Bulgaria’s pre-1941 territory despite German pressure did not fall victim to the Holocaust, those in the occupied and annexed parts of formerly Yugoslav Vardar Macedonia and Greek Thrace did. They were deported to the German death camps by Bulgarian authorities, and killed there. Those who survived the Second World War in „Old Bulgaria“ were not „saved“ either, but rather were deprived of their property, banned to the countryside and interned in forced labour camps. Only in a painful and extended process of transnational and inner-Bulgarian debates did a reformulation of these official Bulgarian politics of history gradually undergo scrutiny. By now, the responsibility of the Bulgarian state and nation for the extermination of more than 11,000 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace in Treblinka has been acknowledged, as well as the successful public protest against the deportation of approximately 48,000 Jews from ,,Old Bulgaria”. Yet, the multiple mistreatments of the Jewish population in the years 1941 to 1944 still remains a sensitive issue.

• Details
• Contents