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3 - Bulgaria during the Holocaust

An Exceptional Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2026

Deborah Mayersen
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Canberra
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Summary

There is no doubt that the Bulgarian Jewish population was at extreme risk of genocide during the Holocaust. At one stage, the cattle cars were literally waiting at the station to begin deportations. Bulgaria, a Nazi ally, introduced discriminatory laws targeting its 48,000 or so Jewish citizens, who experienced escalating persecution. Jews in Bulgarian-occupied Thrace and Macedonia were denied Bulgarian citizenship and deported to the death camps in early 1943. At the same time, the Bulgarian government approved a secret plan to commence deporting Bulgarian Jewry. Yet through an extraordinary series of events, political and public opposition forced the planned deportations to be repeatedly postponed, and ultimately abandoned. In this way, almost the entirety of the Bulgarian Jewish population survived the Holocaust. This chapter examines the key factors that led to their survival. It considers the role of the government, politicians, the church and ordinary Bulgarian citizens in contributing to this outcome. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the insights for genocide prevention that can be gleaned from this case study.

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