The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust

by Tzvetan Todorov, Arthur Denner (Translator)

With the exception of Denmark, Bulgaria was the only country allied with Nazi Germany that did not annihilate or turn over its Jewish population. Here a prominent French intellectual with Bulgarian roots accounts for this singularity.


Tzvetan Todorov assembles and interprets for the first time key evidence from this episode of Bulgarian history, including letters, diaries, government reports, and memoirs--most never before translated into any language. Through these documents, he reconstructs what happened in Bulgaria during World War II and interrogates collective memories of that time. He recounts the actions of individuals and groups that, ultimately and collectively, spared Bulgaria's Jews the fate of most European Jews.


The Bulgaria that emerges is not a heroic country dramatically different from those countries where Jews did perish. Todorov does find heroes, especially parliament deputy Dimitar Peshev, certain writers and clergy, and--most inspiring--public opinion. Yet he is forced to conclude that the "good" triumphed to the extent that it did because of a tenuous chain of events. Any break in that chain--one intellectual who didn't speak up as forcefully, a different composition in Orthodox Church leadership, a misstep by a particular politician, a less wily king--would have undone all of the other efforts with disastrous results for almost 50,000 people.


The meaning Todorov settles on is Once evil is introduced into public view, it spreads easily, whereas goodness is temporary, difficult, rare, and fragile. And yet possible.

Genres: History, Bulgaria, Nonfiction, Holocaust, World War II

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

In Bulgarian Цветан Тодоров. Todorov was a Franco-Bulgarian historian, philosopher and literary theoretician. Among his most influential works is his theory on the fantastic, the uncanny and marvellous.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few months ago I read Tzvetan Todorov’s book Facing the Extreme, and was so impressed with it that I resolved to read more of his work. This is an odd book in terms of structure, as it consists of about 40 pages by Todorov, along with about 150 pages of appendices consisting of source documents – diaries, letters, memoirs etc. The result is that I didn’t find this as good as Facing the Extreme, but I still found some insight within these pages.

Over the years I’ve read a number of books that discuss why people commit evil deeds. I suppose I’ve been interested in these books on the assumption that evil deeds are aberrations that need to be explained. In this book and in Facing the Extreme, Todorov asks why people perform good deeds, even when doing so threatens their own safety and wellbeing. As he puts it in his own words “… when we know that evil is striking our neighbour, the question is, do we do anything about it? And if so, why? And how?

The question of “how?” is an important one in this book, as it examines protests which arose in Bulgaria in 1943, which prevented the country’s 45,000 Jewish people from being deported to the Nazi death camps. Bulgaria was at the time allied to Nazi Germany, albeit in lukewarm fashion, and had an authoritarian government, though one that permitted a limited amount of dissent.

Although the Jews of Bulgaria avoided the gas chambers, in every other way they were treated abominably. In 1940 the Bulgarian government passed a “Law for the Defence of the Nation,” under which Jewish people were severely discriminated against. In 1941 Bulgarian troops occupied parts of Greece and Yugoslavia and, following pressure from Nazi Germany, the Jewish population of these areas was deported to the death camps in early 1943. Only 12 survived out of more than 11,000. The action was implemented suddenly and was meant to be secret, but there was widespread indignation which translated into a determination to protect the Jewish population of “old Bulgaria”, when the regime ordered the deportation of these people as well.

One major element of opposition came from senior leaders of the Orthodox Church, in particular the 11 metropolitans (equivalent to bishops?). Two of the most outspoken were Stefan of Sofia and Cyril of Plovdiv. The latter said he would lie on the tracks in front of any trains taking Jews to the camps, and when the prime minister threatened to arrest Stefan, he responded by saying that the doors of every church and monastery in Bulgaria would be opened to the Jews to allow them to claim sanctuary. Given the importance of the Orthodox Church to Bulgarian national identity, this opposition was awkward for an avowedly nationalist regime.

Todorov probably gives most credit to a politician of the governing party, Dimitâr Peshev, who organised a protest by 43 Assembly deputies from the government party. Peshev had actually voted for the Law for the Defence of the Nation. Despite this, he is today recognised as “righteous” at the Yad Veshem Memorial. There’s a good discussion about the tactics Peshev used. Todorov is clear though, that Peshev did not act alone. Without the various interventions, the deportations would almost certainly have taken place. The right political leadership was a vital factor.

Todorov also highlights that in the spring of 1943 the prospect of an Axis victory no longer looked certain, and the King, who held supreme power in Bulgaria, may have been calculating the need to deal with the victorious Allies after the War.

The author concludes that the deportations were prevented only because a series of factors came together to achieve this. It was a very, very near thing. Hence “the fragility of goodness.”

I plan to read more of Todorov’s books, in due course.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but fascinating book trying to explain why Bulgaria was one of only two German-aligned countries during World War II that didn't deport their Jewish populations. (The other being Denmark.) [Edited to add: A friend has pointed out to me that the preceding statement a) omits Finland, which also did not deport its Jewish population and b) in using the word "aligned" to try to describe the rather different situations of Bulgaria and Denmark during the war, implies that Denmark's cooperation with Nazi Germany might have been something other than forcibly coerced. I probably should have just said that Bulgaria and Denmark were both notable in their success in preserving their Jewish populations from deportation in the face of considerable German pressure, and left it at that.] t's a particularly dramatic story, because Bulgaria had deported nearly 12,000 Jews from Bulgarian-controlled Macedonia and Thrace (of whom 12 survived the war), and the Bulgarian government had actually gotten to the point of arresting large numbers of Jews and preparing to load them onto trains for Poland before the whole thing was abruptly called off.

The first part of the book is an essay in which Todorov lays out his explanation for how this happened. As his title implies, his thesis is that it was highly contingent - a number of things had to be true simultaneously for the outcome to be reached. Some of the things that Todorov highlights:
* Bulgaria had neither a particularly strong tradition of anti-semitism, nor a particularly strong narrative of Bulgarian national superiority. Bulgaria's Jews didn't live in ghettos, spoke Bulgarian, and were mostly artisans and small businessmen with a sprinkling of educated professionals like lawyers. This meant that a lot of Nazi propaganda about the Jews didn't really resonate with a lot of Bulgarians. (Lots of the contemporary documents reproduced in the book contain some version of, "Have you seen our Jews? They're poor.")

* The fact that Bulgaria's king, Boris III, was primarily focused on his own political power and Bulgaria's national interest rather than any anti-Jewish ideology. It's kind of hard to figure out what side Boris was on, because he was great at telling everyone what they wanted to hear. Nevertheless, Todorov is convinced that the king was powerful enough that if he'd wanted Bulgaria's Jews deported, they'd have been deported. The king managed to keep the Germans convinced for ages that he was completely in agreement with their Jewish policies while failing to implement the deportation. (There is an account in the book of a rather hilarious-sounding conversation between Boris III and von Ribbentrop, in which Boris tried to convince von Ribbentrop that Bulgarian Jews were different because they were "Spanish" (he meant Sephardic). von Ribbentrop was unconvinced.)

* Finally, the most critical element was a well-timed and well-orchestrated piece of parliamentary politics by vice-chairman of the Bulgarian National Assembly, Dimitar Peshev. This is the part where I wish the book were longer, because I don't really completely understand the nuances of parliamentary politics in wartime Bulgaria. Peshev wrote an eloquent letter of protest against the deportation of Bulgaria's Jews, and managed to get a fairly large percentage of the members of the governing party in the Assembly to sign it. The immediate result was that Peshev was censured and stripped of his post as vice-chairman, which doesn't sound like a resounding political success. But it seems to have done the trick in persuading the government that the deportation would buy them more trouble domestically than it would be worth in support from Germany.

The longer part of the book consists of reproductions of various contemporary documents - letters, newspaper reports, and diaries related to the events surrounding the attempted deportations. The documents shed a particularly interesting light on the claim that you sometimes hear that people didn't know what was happening to the Jews in Nazi Germany. I don't know what people knew in other places, but the documents make it pretty clear that everyone from writers of articles in Communist newspapers to Bulgarian government ministers knew that if they sent the Jews to Poland they were going to die horribly.

Overall, the message of this book seems to be that if good people want to stop evil from happening, they need not only to be passionate and vocal but very very good at operating the levers of political power. Food for thought.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not so easy to find information on the treatment of the Jewish community in Bulgaria during WW II.
We know that relatively few Bulgarian Jews were sent to the camps. This book debunks some of the theories about why that occurred, including the belief that the King was a "real good guy," rather he seems not surprisingly to have been assessing the odds of Germany winning or losing the War. A few real heroes are noted.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a little dry, more like what one might expect from a history book, but still quite digestible. The first 42 pages are an explanation by Todorov of what happened. Following that are a series of letters of protest written by various organizations and memoirs. I stopped for a long time on the last memoir (Peshev's) but eventually got back to it and his memoir, of all of them, seems to have the most information. It goes through the whys and hows of several parts of the anti-Jewish and anti-Freemason legislation and then exactly how, from his perspective, the deportations were stopped.

[Richard]

(Maybe to read after Evil:The Science Behind Humanity's Dark Side.)

[Dominic Carrillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are specifically interested in a very brief history of this topic (40 pages), along with a relevant collection of primary documents (140 pages), then this is the book you're looking for!
I happen to fall into this category, so it was well worth the read.