Talk:The Holocaust in Bulgaria

Untitled

The English article makes unsubstantiated claims that directly contradict the Bulgarian one (that also provides references). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.123.98.177 (talk) 13:28, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

The link to Adolf Hoffmann leads to another Adolf Hoffmann. This one was born in 1904 and in April 1964 declared dead by the court in Wiesbaden. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.96.245.93 (talk) 11:51, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Moved content from the main page

Not sure where this fits, but as it is written, it's not good for the main article. Veni Markovski | Вени Марковски (talk) 03:21, 7 March 2020 (UTC):

Historians are divided on whether the "eleventh hour" rescue, the halting of Holocaust trains should be considered a "remarkable act of defiance" or as a case of cynical opportunism, given that Macedonia and Thrace Jews were indeed deported; however, it is not controversial that the "combined hostility of influential Bulgarians and the populace at large" to the anti-Semitic measures being proposed played a significant role in blocking the deportation of Bulgaria's Jews to death camps. Misha Glenny. The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers 1804-1999. Pages 506-507 The rescue has been praised by former Israeli President Shimon Peres. [[1]] The presidents of Bulgaria and Israel commemorated the 70th anniversary of the saving of the Bulgarian Jews during World War II

NPOV

The user User:GPinkerton is trying to push his own POV, and hiding behind misinterpreted sources or by not providing an exact quotation for the claims.

1. In the source he provided is written "Bulgarian authorities also confiscated most of the property left behind by those deported.", while from the article the "most of" part is missing and it's looks like all the Bulgarian Jews property was confiscated while this is not the case. --StanProg (talk) 19:46, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

User User:StanProg has taken it upon himself to deny the internal deportation of thousands of Jews from Sofia and elsewhere. This fact, backed by all reliable sources cited, is repeatedly denied or removed on account of that user's desire that Wikipedia says something nice about Bulgaria. "[The Jews] ... had their property confiscated" does not imply all property was confiscated. "Bulgarian authorities also confiscated most of the property left behind by those deported." does not mean that Jews were allowed to keep any property, and it should not be interpreted like this. Instead, it means that not all confiscated property was confiscated by the Bulgarian authorities. The rest was presumably taken over by individual Bulgarians or the police. Please do not attack statements in English that you don't understand and distort the sources with your POV. GPinkerton (talk) 19:57, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton:"User StanProg has taken it upon himself to deny the internal deportation of thousands of Jews from Sofia and elsewhere". Please, give me a single contribution, to support your accusation. --StanProg (talk) 20:03, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

See any of your revisions removing the phrase "forced labour" and all your vexatious disputation of the unalterable fact that Jews inside Bulgaria were deported to the provinces and had their property confiscated. You should read what is written on Chary 1972, p. 63 and p. 178 (which describes post-Axis attempts to restore the property confiscated from the internal deportees.) "... is trying to push his own POV, and hiding behind misinterpreted sources or by not providing an exact quotation for the claims." Read the sources, realize they back all the things I've written, and feel embarrassed. Or, continue to deny and minimize the severity of the Holocaust in Bulgaria and the world can draw its own conclusions about where your sympathies lie ... GPinkerton (talk) 20:20, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

The NPOV label added here is added purely because StanProg refuses to accept the validity of information drawn from reliable sources. Its neutrality is not otherwise in dispute. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GPinkerton (talk • contribs) 20:25, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: I asked you to provide a single edit which which I'm denying "the internal deportation of thousands of Jews from Sofia and elsewhere" and you failed to provide it. I have never denied the deportation/expulsion in which you obviously falsely accused me. Removing the term "forced" is based on a whole chapter, which describes that they were recruited according to the acting law of the armed forces, just like other Bulgarian citizens, mostly Bulgarians, but also Turks, Roma, etc. Furthermore I provided a source, that it was not a forceful, and you removed that source, leaving behind only your source by Anonymous author, which you call reliable. In your source [2] the word "deport" is used 16 times, none of them in the context of the expulsion/relocation within the state and 3 terms expulsion/expelled/relocation within in the context of the internal expulsion/relocation, and you still consider the 16th use of the word "deportation" related to the ones that are relocated within Bulgaria? Isn't that at least strange for you? Please, take your time, read your source again. --StanProg (talk) 20:45, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

No, no, this doesn't work like that. The "chapter" you refer to is not a reliable source and even if it were, it cannot be taken to overturn the repeated fact that the Jews were subjected to forced labour, spelt out in the reliable, verifiable source. My sources are respectable encylopaedias and academic monographs and handbooks. Yours is a machine-translated blog written by a POV political figure. If you can find any published, reliable source that states that the labour Jews were forced to do in Axis Bulgaria was anything other than forced, compulsory, unfree, conscripted, and done after confiscation of their property, feel free to add a quotation. The source your using says as much: Jews were all removed from the regular military and made to do work it was not their choice to do and for which they were not suited. Why do you want to deny this so much? GPinkerton (talk) 20:57, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

It really can't be clearer. This paragraph deals with the deportation of Jews from Sofia to the provinces of Bulgaria.

Shortly thereafter, the Bulgarian government announced the expulsion of 20,000 Jews from Sofia to the provinces. (In 1934, the Jewish population of Sofia was about 25,000, 9 percent of the capital's total population.) Police brutally suppressed popular protests staged by both Jews and non-Jews. Within about two weeks, Bulgarian authorities expelled almost 20,000 Jews, relocated them to the Bulgarian countryside, and deployed males at forced labor in forced-labor camps. Bulgarian authorities also confiscated most of the property left behind by those deported.

This paragraph from the Holocaust Encyclopedia explains what happened to the Jews in Sofia. You can plainly see that all the people deported mentioned in this section are the Jews of Sofia. You can also see that the men were forced to work. Another passage from the Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies says:

But when Belev presented plans for deporting Jews from Sofia either to Poland or to the provinces, the Bulgarian authorities chose the latter alternative. Consequently, 25,743 Jews from Sofia were sent to the countryside, along with another few hundred Jews from Stara Zagora and Kazanlak (Hakov 1 (p. 332) 998: 129). ... the 50,000 Bulgarian Jews suffered greatly from discrimination, expulsions, and forced labor during World War II

Again, you can see that the concept of deportation applies, as is usual in English, equally to removals from a city as from a country. The point is that they were taken somewhere by force. I can't stress enough: read Chary, 1971 and Crowe 2018. They say the same: Jews deported from Sofia, property confiscated, forced to work, &c. GPinkerton (talk) 21:07, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

The source I provided is from the "Information center of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Bulgaria", not from a blog. It's the report of professor colonel Dimitar Nedyalkov, Doctor of Military Science, head of the department "Air Force and Air Defense" at the Bulgarian Military Academy "G. S. Rakovski", a prominent Bulgarian military historian, author of dozens of books on the Bulgarian military history. A report from the conference "Jewish employment during World War II - A salvation plan or a reprisal?" on which was the director of the office of the American Jewish Committee in Bulgaria, Representatives of "Shalom" Organization, 2 deputy ministers, members of Institute for Historical Research at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, National State Archives Agency of Bulgaria, Veliko Turnovo University etc. Who is the author of your source at ushmm.org, what are his/hers qualifications and why this is so reliable that it unconditionally rejects the claim of a prominent military historian? The report and the specified orders confirm that it's a military non-combat service. It can't be "forced", because it's duty. It's the same to say that you are "forced" to pay your taxes in your state. Of course there is a difference between the Jews that served in "Labour Force" and the other people that served there, but this is not related to the "forced" part as they were recruited according to the same military law as the others. --StanProg (talk) 21:25, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

And you think that one "professor colonel" (who obviously has absolutely no motivation to say nice things about his employer, the military of Bulgaria ...) is a reliable source? Well so it might be but only if published in a verifiable reliable academic published source. Where was it published? How does it represent a reliable, verifiable tertiary source for English Wikipedia? Why does its conclusions entirely conflict with every and all reliable sources produced outside the Bulgarian military? Even if it were it has no power whatever to overturn all the other sources that say they were forced to work. Whether or not you believe "duty" somehow justifies the forced labour of civilians based on ethnicity is your business, and it's your POV. Don't bring it into the article. At best, you can write that Bulgarian military now claims the work done was Jewish deportees was somehow free and equal and just a tax, and that they paid a colonel to say so. Nothing more, not without corroborating evidence from a reliable academic tertiary source in English. GPinkerton (talk) 21:40, 7 March 2020 (UTC) Authorities I have cited plainly are: Walter Laqueur, Radu Ioanid (Director of the International Archival Program at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), David M. Crowe, Frederick B. Chary, Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz (chair of the Graduate Program in Contemporary Jewry and professor at the Israel and Golda Koschitsky Jewish History Department at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel), and William I. Brustein. GPinkerton (talk) 21:48, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: We don't know if every one of them is taken by force from Sofia to the provinces. Those, who did not appear on the specified hour at the specified location most probably were taken by force, because this is according to the military law and it affects all the Bulgarian citizens - the same as it was in Bulgaria until 2007 when the "Recruitment military service" was abolished. Also, according to the official documents "their property is listed (what they own in their houses) and their houses sealed. After they are deported (i.e. to the concentration camps) their property is sold at auction. Maybe the line between "confiscated" and "sealed" is a thin for you, but it isn't. There's not a single order/decree/law for confiscation of property of Jews that were expelled from Sofia and other locations with the state. The sources that I provide are opposing only 2 things: the forced labour and the confiscated property, which was not a fact for all the Jews in Bulgaria (it was fact only for the Jews deported out of the state). --StanProg (talk) 22:17, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

"And you think that one..." In the same manner you can say the same Jews that are victims of the Holocaust, or even all non-Bulgarian authors from countries that did not saved their Jews citizens. The report of prof. Nedyalkov is a secondary source as it's based exclusively on primary sources - law, legislation, orders. Did your sources cite specific legislation? On what are based their claims? You don't know that. The conclusions did not conflict, your interpretation conflicts. "Whether or not you believe..." it was not based on ethnicity, because Jews were a small part of "Labour Force" (at 1944 it consisted of 90,000 workers) and that's a fact. So you are OK to accuse prof. Nedyalkov of being paid to write lies (without source), but you're not OK to support a claim with secondary source that quotes a primary source (both available)? How far can you go in your accusation to defend your POV? Please, give a quotes from all those sources that you mentioned from Laqueur to Brustein, so we can see if they confirm your claims. So far I've got nothing from your sources, except an anonymous article at ushmm.org, which is at least disturbing. And you have not still given an example edit/contribution that confirms your accusations toward me that I "deny the internal deportation of thousands of Jews from Sofia and elsewhere". --StanProg (talk) 22:17, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Can you read? See the quotation from Ioanid's chapter in the Oxford Handbook above! It's not my business to convince you that the reliable sources say what they say - I don't need to feed you quotes (although I have already); please have the courtesy to read them before denying the material drawn from them. "Nedyalkov is a secondary source as it's based exclusively on primary sources". That's your issue. Where's the consensus among reliable, verifiable tertiary sources that Nedyalkov's POV, as reported by you, is correct? Where is the confirmation that the opinions reached by Bulgaria's foremost historian of the Bulgarian air force's singular perspective overturns the world-wide consensus evidenced in the academic works of the foremost historians of the Holocaust, repeated cited throughout my contributions and whom you now choose to cast aspersions? The only disturbing thing about this affair is your insistence that none of the sources I have cited (5-6 or more) supports your apparent POV that WW2 was just a big holiday for the Jews of Bulgaria - it shows nothing other than you either haven't read the citations or else are simply a denialist. Evidence of this fact is your worrying POV that Bulgaria "saved their Jews citizens [sic]" as evidenced by your petty remark "non-Bulgarian authors from countries that did not saved their Jews citizens". Of course, it is an established fact that Bulgaria shared culpability for the Holocaust and actively participated in it and the attendant confiscations, with, according to the words of Chary, "ardour". GPinkerton (talk) 22:45, 7 March 2020 (UTC) It should also be noted that the leading historians against whom you are making increasinlgly wild accusations are not from Nazi-aligned countries like Bulgaria, and thus have less of bias towards whitewashing their own nations' histories, as Bulgarian historians might be tempted to do. GPinkerton (talk) 22:48, 7 March 2020 (UTC

It should further be noted that StanProg's claim that "Representatives of "Shalom" Organization" backed the POV he promoting is distinctly and undeniably false. The representatives of Shalom rejected the conclusions of the politically-arranged conference that produced these claims. According to the Sofia Globe head of the orgnaization attended the event and issued a statement rejecting its conclusions. I reproduce this statement, as reported, with emphasis added:

“We are disturbed, and highly disappointed, to note that the Institute for Historical Research at the Bulgarian Academy Sciences has agreed to lend its name to an event that seeks to distort history by giving a platform to the false interpretation that the forced labour camps, to which Bulgarian Jewish men were sent during the Second World War, were established to shelter these men from becoming victims of the Nazi death camps of the Holocaust,” Shalom said.

“By doing so, the reputation of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, built up over the more than 150 years since its founding, is being put at risk by association not only with fake history but with outright Holocaust distortion.”

By associating itself with this so-called “national round table”, it is also putting at risk the name of Bulgaria, not only in regard to the truth of the events involving the country at the time of the Holocaust, but also considering that this country is proudly a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and as such has a duty to uphold and promote accurate knowledge of the events of the Holocaust," the statement said.

It is equally disturbing to note that the names of other Bulgarian institutions have been associated with this event, including – going by the notice on the website of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences – the Ministry of Defence, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski, the GS Rakovski Military Academy and the Veliko Turnovo University Saints Kiril i Metodii. “Whoever involved them in this ill-conceived project is also complicit in putting at risk the names of the Republic of Bulgaria and their own names,” it said.

“Linking this event to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is marked on January 27, is a mockery of the survivors of the suffering and the victims of Nazi ideology,” Shalom said.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in Bulgaria we remember all six million Jews murdered, including those more than 11 000 Jews deported from the territories of northern Greece, Vardar Macedonia and the city of Pirot, administered by the Kingdom of Bulgaria, as we honour the deeds of the Bulgarians who genuinely played key roles in the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews from deportation, the statement said.

“We will never forget that the Jewish labour camps were nothing other than a part of the antisemitic repressive apparatus of the time, characterized by acts of violence and inhuman conditions,” Shalom said.

As earlier stated, any suggestion that forced labour of Bulgaria's Jews was somehow not forced labour is at best disputed and fringe and at worst Holocaust denial. The article should represent the consensus reached by academia, not political statement of dubious intent. GPinkerton (talk) 23:19, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: You are lying again. Where did I claimed that "Representatives of "Shalom" Organization" backed the POV". Please, show the diff where I claim that. --StanProg (talk) 23:28, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

You said: "A report from the conference "Jewish employment during World War II - A salvation plan or a reprisal?" on which was the director of the office of the American Jewish Committee in Bulgaria, Representatives of "Shalom" Organization, 2 deputy ministers, members of Institute for Historical Research at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, National State Archives Agency of Bulgaria, Veliko Turnovo University etc." as though it supported your POV with the appeal to these names institutions. Since it doesn't, and the institutions denounce the affair as antisemitic, I'm saying so.

A further statement, issued by Bulgarian Holocaust survivors in January 2020, was also reported by the Sofia Globe. It reads:

"We, Bulgarian Jews who are Holocaust survivors, joined in this call by our families, insist on an immediate end to attempts at distorting the history of the Holocaust in this country.

"We are gravely pained by events such as the “national round table” held on January 17 on the false question whether the labour camps for Bulgarian Jewish men during the Second World War were a repressive measure or a “rescue plan”. We know the question is false because there is only one answer – they were a repressive measure. Everyone who endured them knows that.

"We see such events as part of a disturbing wider pattern of Holocaust distortion in Bulgaria. Attempts to turn key figures in the pro-Nazi regime of the time into “rescuers of the Jews”. Attempts to deliberately ignore the fact that more than 11 000 Jews from the “new lands” in the territories of northern Greece, Vardar Macedonia and the city of Pirot, then under the administration of the Kingdom of Bulgaria, were deported to be murdered at Treblinka.

"We stand ready to give our testimony, that everyone, must hear, in the interests of historical truth. In this month of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we will not remain silent. We will be heard, even by those who want to ignore our voices for the sake of spreading falsehoods."

Some of this controversy might need a whole new section in the article ... GPinkerton (talk) 23:34, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

User:StanProg is presenting fringe claims based on a non-reliable non-academic source in direct contradiction to the mainstream view and well-regarded tertiary sources. Specifically, references to documents produced by "Jewish Labour Troops during the Second World War – a Rescue Plan or a Repressive Measure" a fringe conference organized in Bulgaria with involvement from right-wing nationalist Bulgarian politicians whose purpose was to falsely claim that the forcible dispossession, internal deportation, and forced labour were all really a big plan to save Bulgarian Jews from the Nazis and it wasn't all that bad. The conference has been denounced by the World Jewish Congress and the Bulgarian Jewish organization Shalom as "Holocaust distortion" and "fake history". GPinkerton (talk) 23:58, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: Let's face the facts:

1. You lied that I "deny the internal deportation of thousands of Jews from Sofia and elsewhere" and upon request, you never provided a diff for proof
2. You lied that I claimed that Shalom backed the report from prof. Nedyalkov and upon request, you never provided a diff for proof
3. You injected your opinion on the articles content, in the beginning of NPOV this section, to make it look like you opened the NPOV discussion
4. You have not done even a single step to work for a consensus solution

Can you please instead lying and trying to confuse the readers, to start working on a consensus? After all this is what this discussion is about. So far from you we have the text of one article by anonymous author, on the other hand I'm quoting one of the top Bulgarian military historians, a professor and Doctor of Military Sciences and a book released by the State Military Historical Archive at Archives State Agency of Bulgaria. I also directly quoted orders along with their number and issuer. I can provide the exact text of the order as well (in Bulgarian) if needed. What you provided so far as a source text, except the article by the anonymous author? Did your sources even exist? After point 1, 2 & 3 I'm not so sure anymore, so as a start please, quote the exact text from "The Bulgarian Jews and the final solution, 1940-1944.", so we can see if you're again not misinterpreting it and trying to prove your POV. As for the "had their property confiscated" as you can see the reliable sources claim that they have "returned to their homes", while you claim all their property was confiscated. As for the "forced labour battalions", they were militarized from 23 January 1941 to 29 January 1942, when they were demilitarized and are just on labor service, with their payment, winter vacation, etc. We can assume that some of them are forcefully recruited, but this does not apply to everyone. Here's a more neutral rewriting of the sentence that covers the deportation, recruitment & confiscation: "Some of the Jews whose deportation from Bulgaria was halted, including all Sofia's 19,000 Jews, were relocated within the country, and all Jewish males between the ages of 20 and 40 were recruited into labour service, some of them forcefully, until September 1944. Most of the deported Jews property was confiscated." Please, take your time and do some work toward a consensus on the topic. --StanProg (talk) 14:41, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Alas, the lies and distortions come from you. Your deliberate ignorance of the multiple references I have added on this and other issues is testament to your desire to distort history and deny the Holocaust. They are not anonymous, and as I have many times repeated, the authors are well-known and respected authorities in the history of the Holocaust. I have already explained why your POV source is unacceptable and why a single non-verifiable POV source cannot be permitted to over-ride the historical consensus reached in reliable tertiary sources. As for your fatuous claims about the non-forced nature of forced labour in Bulgaria, I expect you to find reputable tertiary sources that can be verified by users of English Wikipedia, not political statements engineered by the Bulgarian far-right and denounced as antisemitic by the World Jewish Congress. Find a better source (if you can ...) and then you can add a note about a fringe controversy over Bulgarian Holocaust revisionism. If you feel you cannot, then devote your energies to editing Wikis in your language where you can make idiomatic additions that are helpful to others and not the disruptive POV-pushing you're evidencing here. I am not inclined to discuss this further. GPinkerton (talk) 21:36, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Could you kindly wait a little bit, so that I can look through the disputed contents? I have several chapters about that part of the history, published in my book “Caught in the Net” (Sofia University, 2018), and have done an extensive research through the archives (both in Bulgaria, but also in Moscow, and have talked to researchers of this period), so would be able to contribute. Just give me a few days, as I write here in my free time, and it’s not that much these days. Thanks! P.S. No need of calling each other names, it’s not helpful. 10x. Veni Markovski | Вени Марковски (talk) 22:09, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: please, give a diff of a single lie, that I have written. I'm quoting sources, that I have access to and upon request I can provide the text. You have provided the text of only one source, in which the article is from anonymous author. All the rest are just unsupported by real text claims, which texts you deny to provide us. Having in mind that I've caught you in few lies already, providing the texts from your side is more than required. I don't see any historical consensus, just unsupported claims. "As for your fatuous claims" I have no claims - I quote specific orders, for some of them I have the full-text for other I have web-visible source from a book of the Bulgarian National Archive, where these orders are being kept. There's no fringe controversity when you quote an official orders and decrees from the Bulgarian army and texts from the Bulgarian National Archive. I've put a "POV" template on the "Forced Labour" section, because it's represents only a POV of a single author (it's is based on one single article) - it's not even related to the topic of the article which is the Rescue. --StanProg (talk) 12:28, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

User @GPinkerton,

I would like to clarify the following edit: "The Jews whose deportation from Bulgaria was halted, including all Sofia's 25,743 Jews,[7][8] nonetheless had their property confiscated,[9][10] . . ."

The article provided by you states that "Bulgarian authorities also confiscated most of the property left behind by those deported".

In the beginning of your sentence you address the Jews whose deportation was halted and continue by stating that their property was confiscated. However, according to the sentence quoted above, it was the property left behind by the deported that was confiscated (most of it). Your edit is an example of inaccurate paraphrasing and presented information.

Also, the article https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bulgaria is not complemented by any references.

Regards, SSH 6842 @SSH 6842: All the Jews were deported, whether outside Bulgaria or within it. Their property was seized. There is nothing inaccurate here. There are numerous references that support this, including the one you mention. GPinkerton (talk) 22:07, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

It is unclear what you believe is inaccurate or false. Are you disputing that Bulgaria's Jews were deported from their homes and had their property confiscated? Or what? GPinkerton (talk) 22:36, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

That's not true. Almost no Jews were deported. Almost all of the Jews from Sofia were resettled within Bulgaria. Most of the Jews outside of Sofia remain in their home places. A property of many Jews was confiscated. The rest is a wrong interpretation of texts intended for Macedonia & Thrace Jews, which were on the territory administrated by the Kingdom of Bulgarian, but were under Geman control, wrong paraphrasing and selectable use of sources. --StanProg (talk) 23:10, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

@StanProg: It is true, every word of it. Non-Nazis like myself and the reliable sources describe the "resettlement within Bulgaria" as "deportation" because that is what it is. (The Germans called their Holocaust "resettlement" too.) Contrary to what you have claimed, nearly all Jews were expelled from their homes and forced to live in ghettos established in many places throughout Bulgaria, where they were banned from leaving their billets for most of the day and banned from walking in most streets. Those Jews not expelled were the ones forced to host other deported Jews until 1944. The idea that someone other than Bulgarians were responsible for deportations to Treblinka is a lie. The territories were controlled and occupied by the Bulgarian army, who, together with the police and KEV, were responsible for arresting the Jews in Macedonia and Thrace, gathering them together at concentration camps and transit ghettos inside Bulgaria and imprisoning them there for two weeks or more before the Bulgarian state railway was able to transport them to Lom for slaughter. Almost no Germans were involved in this, and Alexander Belev was there in person to control it. The Bulgarian state was paid 200 Reichmarks for every Jew and demanded some 7 million leva for the cost of transporting them. Jews who could prove they were not Bulgarians were released. All this and more is written in the citations here; I suggest you read them rather than just repeating the nationalist tripe you're been regurgitating. GPinkerton (talk) 00:55, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: There are different terms and deportation is usually used in specific cases, like deportation to the camps. Here's, for example, a scientific source that uses the word "displacement". "A new plan to deport all Jews from the country was created in May 1943. It was drawn in two versions known as Plan A and Plan B. Under Plan A, all the 48000 Jews had to be immediately deported. Under Plan B, all Jews from Sofia had to be displaced to the countryside. After a strong public pressure, Plan B was implemented.". Is the director of the Regional Museum of Ruse prof. Nikolay Nenov, Ph.D. a Nazi? Here are the interviews with Jew and people with Jew origin and none used the word deportation within the boundary of the state. Are these Jews Nazis? In the book, the terms used are "resettlement", "movement", "displacement", but never "deportation" for resettlement within the boundaries of the state. In Yambol, most of the Jews remain in their home, only for some period the men that are eligible for hard work and that are between 20 and 46 worked in Work Groups. There were no such things as ghettos in Bulgaria - there are neighborhoods that are such before the war, most of them were initially in hostels, then in houses, when their accommodation is resolved. In the provided book the only word "ghetto" is in the context of "like a ghetto" (We went to Omurtag and there was like a ghetto. At first, we were not allowed to leave before nine in the morning and before 5 pm. Second, we had no right to study, and in the yard there in the house my father had rented, we lived there.). There were two Jew camps for political and criminal cases - one on them burned down and had about 100 people of Jewish origin - mostly families. And more lies: "Jews who could prove they were not Bulgarians were released.". What do you mean "not Bulgarians"? The Jews from Thrace and Macedonia that you're talking about were not Bulgarian citizens, so are all they released or deported to Treblinka? In fact, this is the reason why Bulgaria could not interfere with their deportation - because they were not Bulgarian citizens and Bulgaria had no authority over them, they were German subjects, unlike the Bulgarian Jews who were saved. And here's how manipulative your claims are:

"Shortly thereafter, the Bulgarian government announced the expulsion of 20,000 Jews from Sofia to the provinces. (In 1934, the Jewish population of Sofia was about 25,000, 9 percent of the capital's total population.) Police brutally suppressed popular protests staged by both Jews and non-Jews. Within about two weeks, Bulgarian authorities expelled almost 20,000 Jews, relocated them to the Bulgarian countryside, and deployed males at forced labor in forced-labor camps. Bulgarian authorities also confiscated most of the property left behind by those deported. ~ Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC"

.

Here you can see that the author is writing about the Sofia Jews, which were expulsed to the provinces, the term used is "relocated", so is the "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" a "Nazi" organization? "most of the property left behind" - this is again about the Sofia Jews and you've added this for all the Jews of Bulgaria, which is just a lie and I'm sure you know it. You cite sources selectively and try to distort the facts by giving meaning to mass practice in rare cases. This is pure manipulation. --StanProg (talk) 08:27, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

@StanProg: The USHMM Encylcopedia says in black and white there that the property of the Jews deported from Sofia was seized and the Jews were deported to the camps and ghettos. The text is not ambiguous. Your Bulgarian article cannot be used as evidence to prove the English word deportation is inappropriate - it is used by numerous sources, the authors of all of which, like me, speak better English than you. Please do not attack statements in English that you don't understand and distort the sources with your POV. There are more than fifty pages on Bulgaria's concentration camps and ghettos in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, vol. III. It is obvious you don't want this to be true, or you don't want others to know that it is true, but that won't change reality. READ YOUR HISTORY! I am not inclined to try to educate you further and I have no idea how much of the material you have linked to was written by Nazis or Bulgarian nationalists and I don't quite care. The fact is that 20% of Bulgaria's Jews were massacred, and 80% were deported to ghettos and forced labour and their property confiscated. Your lies cannot change that. Your attempt to claim the Jews Bulgaria had killed were not Bulgarian is absurd. They were "not Bulgarian" because the Bulgarain Nazi government had banned Jews having Bulgarian citizenship. Many will have been born in the San Stefano borders and will have been Bulgarian citizens for decades before the Law for the Protection of the Nation made them stateless. 74 Spanish citizens, 19 Albanians, and 5 Italians were arrested in Bulgaria's 41 borders and released by the Bulgarian government as being the responsibility of other nations; the Bulgarian Jews had no such escape. 140 Bulgarian citizen Jews were also arrested in France; the French authorities asked Bulgaria is it wanted them alive. Bulgaria said no and most were killed. The source you are quibbling about is unequivocal, as are all the others. It says, and I've pointed this out before:

"Shortly thereafter, the Bulgarian government announced the expulsion of 20,000 Jews from Sofia to the provinces. (In 1934, the Jewish population of Sofia was about 25,000, 9 percent of the capital's total population.) Police brutally suppressed popular protests staged by both Jews and non-Jews. Within about two weeks, Bulgarian authorities expelled almost 20,000 Jews, relocated them to the Bulgarian countryside, and deployed males at forced labor in forced-labor camps. Bulgarian authorities also confiscated most of the property left behind by those deported."

Since by this time the Jews from Macedonia and Thrace were killed and their property seized, the property confiscated here is the property left behind by the Jews of Sofia. (and other cities) Here is another source cited:

"The Council of Ministers, however, did not follow Belev’s more drastic proposals on this occasion, and on May 21, 1943, the government voted to expel the Jews from Sofia (and several other cities) to the provinces. On the eve of Cyrillic Alphabet Day (May 24), Sofia’s Jewish residents were given three days to leave, with a maximum of thirty kilograms of luggage per person. There were exceptions made for Jews married to non-Jews, mobilized Jews, those who were baptized (by August 29, 1942), and those carrying potentially infectious diseases. Within days, the streets of Sofia were full of purchasers eager for bargains on the furniture, personal effects, and other souvenirs that Jews were forced to leave behind. Departure orders assigned the dates and times of transport trains, separating families, amid the suspension of bread rations. House arrests, housing scarcities, bans on professional activity, circulation restrictions, and curfews produced extremely precarious living conditions for the Jews, who did not always receive a warm welcome from local inhabitants in their new place of residence."

and again

"Close examination of the Aryanization of Jewish properties in Bulgaria and the plundering of Jewish assets and property following deportations in occupied territory reveals a range of predatory practices that included pilfering, theft, abusively low purchase prices, and efforts by some individuals to obtain favors from delegates for Jewish Affairs and members of the Commissariat. Obviously, the outcome of these strategies was that Bulgarian officials and neighbors appropriated the worldly possessions and property that had been confiscated from local Jews."

Please desist in your campaign to spread anti-Jewish rubbish on Wikipedia; this is not the blog of the United Patriots party. Thanks. GPinkerton (talk) 16:51, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

1. @GPinkerton: USHMM Encyclopedia says "confiscated most of the property left behind by those deported" and this is about the Sofia Jews as the whole paragraph is for them, not for all the Jews in Bulgaria. You claim "The Jews whose deportation from Bulgaria was halted, including all Sofia's 25,743 Jews, nonetheless had their property confiscated.", which means all of the property of all the Jews were confiscated, which is quite different that the information int he source that you've provided. --StanProg (talk) 00:09, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

2. "material you have linked to was written by Nazis": Which exactly material that I have linked to is written by Nazis? --StanProg (talk) 00:22, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

3. Bulgaria's Jews are Jews with Bulgarian citizenship (48,000) and almost all of them were rescued, which is explained in the sources. The Jews from Thrace and Macedonia were not Bulgairan citizens, not Bulgarian Jews, hense Bulgaria have no authority over them as they were under German control. --StanProg (talk) 00:29, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

They were arrested and deported from areas under occupation and control by the Bulgarians. Germans were not involved. No German occupation forces existed inside Bulgaria's 1941 borders. Bulgaria had all the authority, and Bulgaria took the Jews to Bulgaria, then sent them to Austria. Cease your distortions, read the books. GPinkerton (talk) 00:36, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Not all the Jews from Bulgaria were resettled within the state. I already provided a source with the resettlement of the Sofia Jews. As for the rest, some from the other places were resettled as well, but not all of them. I already gave an example with Yambol and there are many more. Only males that are eligible for hard work from 20 to 46 were either recruited in Labour Corps (1941) or sent to Labour Groups (after 1941) for a specific period of time, they were paid, had a vacation, etc. (as it's described in Labour Service section). --StanProg (talk) 00:58, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

4. "They were "not Bulgarian" because the Bulgarain Nazi government had banned Jews having Bulgarian citizenship." That's a lie. First "Nazi government" is a specific term that is not related to the Kingdom of Bulgaria. And second, the Jews from Thrace and Macedonia just did not have Bulgarian citizenship, and such was not given to them with a specific law, while all Bulgarian Jews retained their citizenship. And yes, all Jews that had citizenship different than Bulgarian, were allowed to return to their states, because Bulgaria had no authority over them. "Bulgaria said no and most were killed." - can you provide a source for that?

5. "Shortly thereafter..." We're discussing this for 10th time and I can't understand why are you continuing to deny what's written in the source: 20 000 Jews from Sofia (most, but not all, since at least few thousand remained) were resettled in the provinces on places (most probably indicated in this III issue that you've mentioned). These are not all 48,000 Bulgarian Jews. The Council of Ministers...... again the same... --StanProg (talk) 00:58, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

6. "Close examination of the..." - this is about the Jews from Thrace & Macedonia as this is about the occupied territory (of Greece & Yugoslavia), not about the Bulgarian Jews. --StanProg (talk) 00:58, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

7. Please, show me a diff where I sad something bad about the Jews. --StanProg (talk) 00:58, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

They were arrested and deported from areas under occupation and control by the Bulgarians. Germans were not involved.. Here's Adolf Beckerle's' statement about this: "In accordance with Himmler’s instructions, which I received by telegraph, I, together with the German Government Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, Danneker, through the Minister Gabrovsky, managed to evict Jews from Macedonia and Thrace (14-15 thousand people), who, according to my request, were sent to Poland. Their further fate is unknown to me." So, the Germans were not involved? --StanProg (talk) 01:09, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

It's obvious you have not read any of the sources cited. Please do so. I wish you would just make some effort yourself. One of them states:

It is ultimately difficult to imagine that the Bulgarian leadership was unaware that by refusing to grant nationality to Jews in the occupied territories they were relinquishing any possibility of intervening on their behalf if it should later become necessary. As noted earlier, Bulgarian officials had complained that foreign legations were using the citizenship argument to resist the application of Bulgarian anti-Jewish policies to their citizens. In February 1941, for example, Bulgarian diplomats demanded reciprocal respect for Bulgarian Jewish citizens and non-Jewish citizens in France, including similar protections and allowing Jews holding Bulgarian citizenship to continue to exercise their own occupations. An additional request a month later asked that temporary Bulgarian—not French—administrators be appointed for Bulgarian Jewish businesses that were Aryanized in occupied France.

While the Bulgarian decision-making process at the time remains somewhat opaque, the impact of the June 10, 1942 decree is well known. The new policies made Jews residing in territories that had recently become part of Bulgaria both legally and economically vulnerable. Legally, Jews in the newly annexed territories could no longer be considered Bulgarian nationals, an option that continued to be available to other Greek and Yugoslav citizens “of non-Bulgarian origin” until April 1943; they were registered as either “Yugoslav” or “Greek” citizens (in other words, citizens of states that no longer existed in a legal sense). Economically, because they were assigned the status of foreigners, Jews in the occupied territories owed a tax on foreign residents that further weakened the Jewish community.

On July 4, 1942, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dimităr Šišmanov, noted that he had received approval from the Prime Minister, Bogdan Filov, and confirmed to German authorities that “the Bulgarian government had nothing against the deportation (preselvaneto) of Jews, Bulgarian citizens, located on German territory.” Bulgaria’s only conditions were to be provided with a list of deportees and the immediate transfer of expropriated Jewish assets to “internal [Bulgarian] government agencies,” pending the signature of a bilateral agreement. On April 3, 1943, a report from the counselor to the German legation, Horst Wagner, confirmed that Bulgarian authorities had agreed that all anti-Jewish policies adopted by the Reich applied to Bulgarian Jews in Germany or in any other territories under German control, including “transfers to the East,” and that the Bulgarian government agreed not to request their return.

In the spring of 1943, Nikola Balabanov, the head of the Bulgarian legation in Paris, noted that roundups of foreign Jews, including Jews with Bulgarian citizenship, had taken place in occupied zones. Balabanov further noted that the Vichy authorities had asked governments with Jewish citizens living in France to clarify whether they intended to request their repatriation prior to March 31, 1943, adding that Italy, Portugal, and Switzerland had expressed support for this position. Underscoring the state of alarm among Bulgarian Jews living in France on April 7, 1943—who were less fearful than those living in the Southeast, which was still under Italian control--Balabanov asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to clarify its position. In October, Balabanov again asked for the Minister’s position, referring to “40 to 50 Bulgarian-Israelite citizens” from the Nice area after Italian capitulation. The only available source on this matter is a reply – in the negative – from the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs dated November 4, 1943. It is estimated that approximately 140 Bulgarian Jews residing in France were subsequently rounded up and interned at Drancy, many of whom were deported to the East."

Kindly read your history and cease your attempts to exonerate Bulgaria for the Holocaust. Who do you think you'll convince? Do you think your "Academy of Sciences" will rewrite the history of the world? Give up. GPinkerton (talk) 01:17, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

How is this related to the content that we're discussing? --StanProg (talk) 01:31, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Amid much else, you demanded a quotation from this (perfectly freely accessible) source. There it is. It demonstrates that Bulgaria deliberately killed 20% of its Jewish population while insidiously denying they were Bulgarian or were the Bulgarian state's responsibility, (a lie apparently still repeated ...) and was very happy to allow the Germans to kill Bulgarian Jews elsewhere in Europe many months after the supposed "rescue of the Bulgarian Jews", just so long as Bulgarians profited financially from their confiscated property. It would be easier if you just did some reading and rather less denying. GPinkerton (talk) 01:51, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

The article is about the rescue 48,000 Bulgarian Jews, not about the Thrace & Macedonia Jews. This is what we're discussing. Here're some memories from a supposedly "rescued Bulgarian Jew" ([3]): "When my father came home for a winter break, once he even came during the summer he was not very thin, he was not starved, he just needed some rest, a warm bed, a hot shower, but otherwise, he would tell us that obviously home was preferable, but that the life there was not that bad at all" This person (the lady's father) was in a Jewish labour group, and as I've already indicated in "Labour Service" section, they had a winter break (the lady even mentions a summer one). Your claims that "nonetheless had their property confiscated" contradict drastically to the interview of that woman. The man returned to his "confiscated" home, to his family. So much for all being deported to ghettos and camps. The next person at the video also explains that his father comes back "home". Unfortunately, most of the videos with rescued Jews interviews are in Bulgarian and most, unfortunately, you seem to read only the content on the matter that you like and deny all the rest. I asked you a question before. You blamed me "I have no idea how much of the material you have linked to was written by Nazis", so please be so kind to point me one material posted by me that is written by Nazis. So far you've blamed me several (5+) times and upon request, you did not provide a single diff, so please, at least for this "Nazi author" provide a diff, so we can see that at least one blame is legit and not just an attempt to defocus the discussion. --StanProg (talk) 02:31, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

"Resettlement" or "resettlers" ("iszelnitsi") is described as a "customary Nazi euphemism" and "in keeping with Nazi vocabulary" on page 10 of the Encyclopedia mentioned above, which you obviously still haven't read. Repeating the lie of "resettlement" is repeating the Bulgarian Nazi government's own propaganda, which itself imitated German official language of the time. It is not used by serious credible historians. GPinkerton (talk) 22:21, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

The cited source says: Nazy-allied, not pro-Nazi. There is a slight difference and, because of that I have changed the intro per source. Jingiby (talk) 16:18, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

There is enough evidence that the kingdom was ruled by a pro-Nazi regime. Facts are facts, and they can't be changed. I am not sure if GPinkerton has used this term (I remember that I have), but for sure it's a term that has been used a number of times in publications, books, etc., even here.Veni Markovski | Вени Марковски (talk) 17:27, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

The source cited by GPinkerton is Cambridge University Press publication and it has used 'Nazy-allied. Jingiby (talk) 17:48, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 17 April 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved as proposed. Consensus is clear that this is the broadest, most common and most neutral title. (non-admin closure) Red Slash 22:45, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

The lede and much of the article now need to be rewritten; in addition, a further move request to see about Bulgaria and the Holocaust might be a good idea. That title was proposed but didn't really get a good discussion. Red Slash 22:48, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

---

Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews → The Holocaust in Bulgaria – The present article's title is non-neutral and misleading. The phrase is a creation of the People's Republic of Bulgaria as an exercise in self-promotion and an abnegation of Bulgarian responsibility for the Holocaust. The pro-Nazi Bulgarian state and Axis member organized and paid for the systematic massacre of 20% of the Jewish population within the borders of the Kingdom of Bulgaria as it existed in 1941. A similar proportion of France's Jews were killed in the Holocaust, in a country directly under German occupation and with collaborationist government; no German soldiers ever occupied Bulgaria. Unlike the Rescue of the Danish Jews, in which nearly all Denmark's Jews escaped imprisonment and death and German occupation, and which the post-war communist Bulgarian state sought to rival with its own "rescue" claim, Bulgaria's Jews had their property confiscated, were expelled from major cities and confined to ghettos, and were subjected to forced labour until the Red Army crossed the Danube and Bulgaria finally changed sides. Moreover, the Bulgarian state organized and executed the arrest, transport, imprisonment of more than 11,000 Jews inside Bulgaria in concentration camps at Skopje, Dupnitsa, and Blagoevgrad, and final expulsion onto boats on the Danube at Lom bound for Vienna and a railway journey to Treblinka. For the cost of that part of their journey that was through German-occupied territory, the Bulgarian state paid the Nazis 250 reichsmarks per head. The Bulgarian government also signed an agreement that it would under no circumstances request their repatriation. In occupied France and elsewhere the Bulgarian government declined to intervene to help any Bulgarian Jews arrested in round-ups in France and Italy, and many went to their deaths with the express approval of the Bulgarian state many months after the supposed "rescue of the Bulgarian Jews".

Pages 1-44 of the 2018 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, vol. 3: Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany deal with Bulgaria, as does the [Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence] (required reading), which are the most full and comprehensive recent tertiary sources, as well as the Encyclopedia of the Holocausts chapter on Bulgaria. An excellent historiographical treatment, vital for the understanding of recent historical revisionism and the role of the issue in Bulgarian nationalism pre- and post- the fall of communism, is also found at: https://doi.org/10.1080/23256249.2017.1346743 (2017) (required reading).

There is, furthermore, a fringe belief in Bulgaria, propagated by revisionist non-historians and the Bulgarian far-right at a January 2020 "round-table" and accompanying document produced by the "Bulgarian Academy of Sciences", politicians of the former United Patriots ultra-nationalist coalition, among others, that the forced labour by which Jewish families were separated and immiserated (together with the Bulgarian Turkish and Muslim minorities and the Roma/gypsys, euphemistically termed "unemployed") was in some way an elaborate ploy to "rescue" the Jews. This is denounced as antisemitic distortion by Bulgaria's main Jewish organization, Shalom, and the World Jewish Congress, as well as Bulgarian Holocaust survivors:

https://sofiaglobe.com/2020/01/17/controversy-over-round-table-on-second-world-war-labour-camps-for-bulgarian-jewish-men/

https://sofiaglobe.com/2020/01/27/international-holocaust-remembrance-day-bulgarian-survivors-tell-their-stories/

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/wjc-and-bulgarian-jewish-community-concerned-by-national-round-table-on-wwii-labor-camps-1-5-2020

The present title is used as cover by editors to absolve Bulgarian responsibility for the Holocaust and propagate falsehoods denying the relevance of incorporating material on ghettoization, forced labour, and internal deportation in the article, on the grounds that it is not "rescue". This circular argument can be short-circuited by changing this page to a neutral title like: "The Holocaust in Bulgaria", along the lines of other Axis and occupied countries' own Holocaust articles, e.g. The Holocaust in Slovakia, The Holocaust in France, The Holocaust in Italy, and so on. Much of the present Talk page dispute hinges on whether confiscation of real estate and forcible evacuation of Bulgaria's Jews from its cities to regional camps, labour camps, and ghettos with hand-luggage only constitutes "confiscation" and "deportation" and whether the fringe beliefs on "forced labour as rescue" has any place on a mainstream encyclopaedia. The page deserves a more neutral title. GPinkerton (talk) 23:40, 17 April 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. Steel1943 (talk) 21:36, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

A lot of false claims and a lot of manipulations are presented above. "no German soldiers ever occupied Bulgaria"? Take a look World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia (as you mention the 20% Jews from Greece and Yugoslavia, and these ~300,000 were just in Yugoslav Macedonia, which were 1/3 Italian zone and 2/3 Bulgarian zone). And that's just the beginning of your false claims & manipulations. --StanProg (talk) 00:00, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose: All the Jews from Bulgaria proper survived during the WWII. None of them was annihilated. De facto they were rescued. The Jews who were sent to Treblinka were native to the Greek and Yugoslav territories occupied by Bulgaria. However, these territories never became de jure part of Bulgaria and these Jews never became Bulgarian citizens. The fact of the rescue is recognized for example by Zohar Segev, a professor in the Jewish History Department at Haifa. University. Check his book "The World Jewish Congress during the Holocaust: Between Activism and Restraint" , Volume 7 of New Perspectives on Modern Jewish History, Walter de Gruyter, 2014, ISBN 3110320266, where on p. 163 he has stated:

...yet recognition of the organization's endeavor to rescue Bulgaria's Jews adds an important element to the assessment of the circumstances that brought about that rescue.. Jingiby (talk) 04:18, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

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@Jingiby: This quote relates to the World Jewish Congress's attempts (endeavour) to "rescue Bulgaria's Jews" in the United States; it in no way implies the Bulgarian state rescued its Jews (from its own plans?), this is utter distortion. The Jews massacred with the connivance of Bulgaria were many of them born in Bulgaria before the First World War, inside the 1878 borders. The Jews of South Dobruja were allowed to take Bulgarian citizenship along with the other residents there, by contrast, the Jews of Thrace and Macedonia were specifically barred from becoming Bulgarian citizens by the Nazi-inspired race-Law for Protection of the Nation. This was of course deliberate, and the Holocaust was designed by the Bulgarian state to increase the percentage of ethnic Bulgarians living in those territories in the hope of impressing Nazi geographers and being awarded those lands after a German victory. The idea that because they were specifically denied Bulgarian citizenship they were "foreign" or "not Bulgarian" is precisely what the Bulgarian government hoped for. Once stateless, the Jews could be annihilated, as they were. Continuing to repeat the denial that these Jews were the responsibility of the Bulgarian state is a lie inherited not only from Soviet Bulgaria but from Nazi Bulgaria too. It is not worthy of repetition in a mainstream encyclopaedia. The fact that many Jews survived the Holocaust in Bulgaria is irrelevant; the Holocaust is more than merely Jews killed, the phenomenon of evictions, arrests, ghettoization, and forced labour also comes under that head, and these, together with the organized destruction of the Jewish minorities in Bulgaria between 1941 and 1944. 80% of France's Jews survived, but there is no Rescue of the French Jews; there is, quite rightly, a The Holocaust in France. It should be noted that of those that were deported from homes in Macedonia and Thrace, those that could prove citizenship of any country other than Bulgaria were released. Only "Bulgarian" Jews were killed by Bulgaria's actions that month. GPinkerton (talk) 15:36, 18 April 2020 (UTC) The Jews of South Dobruja were allowed to take Bulgarian citizenship: That's because Southern Dobruja, was part of Bulgaria (Treaty of Craiova, 1940, ceded from Romania), and it remained such even after the end of WWII, while the territories of the capitulated Kingdoms of Yugoslavia & Greece were just administrated - they were never ceded to Bulgaria. That's the difference between Bulgarian Jews and Jews from Thrace & Macedonia, which also had a different fate. --StanProg (talk) 18:17, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @StanProg: This is false. The reason their fates' were different is because the Bulgarian Nazi race-Law for the Protection of the Nation was only passed in early 1941, after the annexation of S. Doruja but before the de facto and Bulgarian de jure annexation of Macedonia and W Thrace. In any case, Bulgaria and the tsar intended to kill all of the Jews and pay a lot of money for the "service". This is fact well-reported in non-POV sources, which you have ignored. GPinkerton (talk) 18:30, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @GPinkerton: Dobrogea was not annexed, it was ceded. There was a treaty between the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Romania. I don't see Thrace & Macedonia to be given by Yugoslavia and Greece via treaty to Bulgarian. Please, see what annexation means and read the leading text of Treaty of Craiova. --StanProg (talk) 18:58, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @StanProg: Romania ceded it. Bulgaria annexed it. That's how these verbs work in English. The governments of Greece and Yugoslavia did not functionally exist in 1941; Bulgaria invaded, occupied, and annexed the territories with German approval but unilaterally. Please, understand English before you wrongly attack others' points. You still clearly have not read the literature. GPinkerton (talk) 20:31, 18 April 2020 (UTC) Which part of "Annexation is the administrative action and concept in international law relating to the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state and is generally held to be an illegal act." you did not understand? --StanProg (talk) 20:58, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @StanProg: It is obvious which part you do not understand. The Oxford English Dictionary describes "annexation" as "The action or process of joining to or uniting: a.) of joining materially. rare., b.) of adding or attaching as an attribute, condition, or consequence, and c.) esp. of attaching as an additional privilege, possession, or territorial dependency; appropriation." The Cambridge English Dictionary defines it as "possession taken of a piece of land or a country, usually by force or without permission". There is no requirement that annexation be by force. Your unsourced quotation (if that's what it is) is worthless and irrelevant. Moreover the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence [when will you read it?] says, of the territories: "Legally, Jews in the newly annexed territories could no longer be considered Bulgarian nationals, an option that continued to be available to other Greek and Yugoslav citizens “of non-Bulgarian origin” until April 1943; they were registered as either “Yugoslav” or “Greek” citizens (in other words, citizens of states that no longer existed in a legal sense). ... they were assigned the status of foreigners, Jews in the occupied territories ...". Please, stop. GPinkerton (talk) 21:15, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

• Move either to Bulgaria and the Holocaust (preferred, in order to discuss Bulgaria's overall role) or The Holocaust in Bulgaria. I agree the current title is misleading because although the Bulgarian Jews survived, there were various discriminatory measures against them and the article title sounds like the Bulgarian state was purely benevolent. Unlike the Danish Jews the Bulgarian ones were not "rescued", they simply were not deported. Some argue that Tiso was a savior because he did not deport all of the Slovak Jews, just most of them, and this also smacks of revisionism. It was well within the capacity of the likes of Axis aligned countries not to deport their Jewish population until the Germans physically occupied their countries. buidhe 05:48, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

  You can easily find high quality academic sources describing the "rescue" of Bulgarian Jews as a myth: The World Reacts to the Holocaust: "Bulgarian historians developed a myth of the "rescue of the Bulgarian Jews"; this paper discusses the "emergence of the myth that the Bulgarian Jews were saved"; and

  Generations of Bulgarians have been inspired by the national legend relating how the Bulgarian state and its monarch, King, Boris III, mobilized to save Bulgaria’s 48,000 Jews, plus more than 11,000 Jews in regions annexed by Bulgaria in Macedonia, Serbia, and northern Greece during the war. This paper calls the national myth into question, examining the historical realities behind the deportations in response to the questions of who exactly acted to save Jews,and from whom were they actually being saved?

  — [4]

  In Bringing the Dark Past to Light:

  Todorov’s judicious evaluation of the existing evidence ultimately leads him to conclude that Boris was the person to be held responsible for the deportation of the Jews from the occupied territories. He goes on to add that the king “did nothing to stop it, even though he had the means to do so.”14 In Todorov’s estimation, the king’s defense of Bulgaria’s Jews was driven not by humanitarian principles but by calculated political considerations of national interest

  At best the rescue narrative is an interpretation, not a fact, and shouldn't be in the article title. buidhe 10:34, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

@Buidhe: Thanks. I think The Holocaust in Bulgaria is best because it can then deal with all the different atrocities that happened at Bulgaria's behest; the elimination of Jews at Treblinka, the incarceration of Jews for transit and for ghettoization, the forced labour, the statelessness, immiseration, confiscations, as well as the role willingly played by Bulgaria in the genocide of Jews in Greece, who were transported through and imprisoned in, Bulgarian territory. It should also be noted that Bulgaria began deporting Jews from the Balkans to Treblinka two weeks before the Germans did. The Holocaust in Bulgaria is neutral and fits the precedents established by all other relevant nations, whether Nazi-allied or Nazi-occupied. GPinkerton (talk) 15:36, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose: I don`t think that Steven Sage understands the situation in that year. If we look at map of Macedonia and Northern Greece at that time we will see Bulgarian-administered teritory and not Bulgaria which is different. Hollocaust is very strong word to describe what happen to Bulgarian Jews (and not those from Vardar Macedonia and Northern Greece). Yes, there is labour camps, there is antisemithic laws and some kind of persecution, but you must read Adolf Heinz-Bekerle diary, then ambassador of Nazi Germany in Bulgaria to see that Bulgarians don`t want to deport Bulgarian Jews. There is secret agreement between Theodor Dannecker and Alexander Belev, Bulgarian commissar of Jewish Affairs to deport Bulgarian Jews, but that won`t happen. Still of course there is problem with this 13, 000 Jews and this is not mentioned properly in the article.--Ilikeliljon (talk) 07:43, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

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Kingdom of Bulgaria - 20% of Jews here killed in 1943 @Ilikeliljon: Here is a map of Bulgaria in 1943. 20% of the Jews in the country marked "Bulgaria" were imprisoned at Dupnitsa, Blagoevgrad, and Skopje, then they were taken to Lom and the Bulgarians paid 250 marks each for the cost of killing them and signed away their lives. When the Bulgarian Jews living France and Italy were arrested, the Bulgarians were happy for them to be killed so long as their property was confiscated by Bulgarians. This happened in November 1943, many months after Bulgaria "saved" the Jews. Steven Sage is the author of a whole chapter on Bulgaria in a well-known and respected encyclopaedia and doubtless understands the history of 1943 better than you do. The work is, moreover, a WP:RS. GPinkerton (talk) 15:36, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @GPinkerton: please provide source about your claim that jews from Dupnitsa and Blagoevgrad were sent in Lom because there is difference between been imprisoned in Dupnitsa and to be from this town. This claim "the Bulgarians were happy for them to be killed so long as their property was confiscated by Bulgarians." is quite harsh and it is personal opinion.--Ilikeliljon (talk) 19:40, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @Ilikeliljon: I have repeated the fact, repeated in multiple reliable sources, cited in the proposal and in the present article, that the Jews of the kingdom of Bulgaria were imprisoned in concentration camps at Skopje, Blagoevgrad, and Dupnitsa, among other places before being put on boats at Lom. If you read the sources, you will see that this is true. The Jews of "Old Bulgaria" had their property confiscated, were confined to ghettos, and forced to do unfree hard labour. If you read the sources, you will also see your other question answered. See the required reading; I cannot read for you. GPinkerton (talk) 20:31, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @Ilikeliljon: Page 16 of the Encyclopaedia of Camps and Ghettos, vol. III describes not only how Dupnitsa was used as a transit concentration camp for Jews deported from Bulgarian-occupied Greece but also as a ghetto for 1,600+ Jews deported from Sofia. They were imprisoned there between June 1943 and September 1944. Page 19 deals with Blagoevgrad and the Jews imprisoned there, who were both from occupied territory in Greece and Serbia (Bulgaria sent these to Treblinka) and then later Jews deported from Sofia. GPinkerton (talk) 22:27, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @GPinkerton: you are wrong. You make claims, you must defend what you write. I`m not oblige to search where are, in my opinion, controversial claims that you made. You also must read more and not to show this rather attacking behavior. I would advise you to read THE BULGARIAN JEWS AND THE FINAL SOLUTION which in my opinion is far more objective about how complicated is the question. How one people from goverment were against Jews and other was not, and that the Germans themself see that in Bulgaria there is not negative attitude toward Jews and it will be hard for them to execute the final solution.--Ilikeliljon (talk) 12:28, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose: The article follows Wikipedia's naming conventions and this is the common name. I agree that the content related to the Jews of Thrace and Macedonia and well as other unrelated directly to the rescue texts could be moved in other articles, like Bulgaria during World War II & History of the Jews in Bulgaria depending on the content. The topic is the main subject of several books, like "Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews" by Michael Bar-Zohar, "Saving the Bulgarian Jews in World War II" by Christo Boyadjieff, "THE POWER OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN A TIME OF GENOCIDE: Proceedings of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on the Rescue of the Jews in Bulgaria 1940-1944" by Albena Taneva and Ivanka Gezenko and Alex Tanev. The story is covered also in "Rescue: the story of how gentiles saved Jews in the Holocaust" by Milton Meltzer and many more books. There are hundreds of scientific and non-scientific articles by authors all over the world covering the subject of the article as it is now. There are many interviews with rescued Jews as well. The article can be extended a lot covering the role of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, public and political figures, the society itself. There is enough sources about this. The Bulgarian archives have a special project covering the fate of the Bulgarian Jews during WWII with a huge amount of original documents covering the topic. There a special project with interviews of the rescued Jews and a book based on that interviews at [5]. If there are more scholars that oppose this act, it will be good their point of view to be illustrated as well. The role of King Boris is contradictory, and this can also be appropriately reflected. --StanProg (talk) 18:07, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

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@StanProg: These sources you allude to are all both less academic and less recent than all the sources I have referred to, plus almost of the others cited on this page, which you repeatedly refuse to read. Your polemical articles from the Church are absurd; they actually campaign to have themselves given the Nobel Prize, even though they never lifted a finger to halt the Bulgarians' genocide in occupied territory and were only really concerned about the inclusion of baptized Jews in the round-ups. This is not the common name in either academic literature or popular parlance outside Bulgaria and its self-aggrandizing national Synod. It is moreover a POV claim not substantiated by actual facts or reliable sources, and disproven by the blood of thousands of Jews on the Kingdom of Bulgaria's hands. GPinkerton (talk) 18:22, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @GPinkerton:: Such changing of other user comments in unacceptable behavior: [6]. In Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines is clearly written: Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning, even on your own talk page. Please, read the guidelines. --StanProg (talk) 20:42, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @StanProg: Oh you can read? The sources StanProg refers to are deprecated, outdated, and many are POV pop. lit. by non-historians. The dates, the inclusion of which StanProg objects because it "change its meaning" [!], are: [1989] "Saving the Bulgarian Jews in World War II" Christo Boyadjieffcommunist era polemic by exiled Bulgarian diplomat and non-historian [1991] "Rescue: the story of how gentiles saved Jews in the Holocaust" Milton Meltzergeneral work about individual resistance to official antisemitism, not relating to any "rescue" of Bulgaria as a whole [1998] "Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews" Michael Bar-ZoharPOV polemic against Communist official narrative by politician non-historian [2002] "The Power of Civil Society in a Time of Genocide: Proceedings of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on the Rescue of the Jews in Bulgaria 1940-1944" Albena Taneva and Ivanka Gezenko and Alex Tanev. POV pamphlet from the Bulgarian Church; not a historical work] Naturally, none of these 20th century references supersede the much more detailed, academic, neutral, and recent 21st century references given in the proposal and elsewhere. 21:03, 18 April 2020 (UTC) GPinkerton (talk) 21:50, 18 April 2020 (UTC) Here are some books an one essay of rescued Jews including historians (Haim Oliver, Albert Cohen, Anri Assa, Ĭosif Ilel), and few other people, like the Italian historian Gabriel Nissim & Carl Steinhouse, which cover the topic and use the terms either saved or rescued: Haim Oliver - "We were saved: how the Jews in Bulgaria were kept from the death camps" (1977), Albert Cohen, Anri Assa - "Saving of the Jews in Bulgaria 1941-1944" (1977), Carl Steinhouse - "Wily Fox: How King Boris Saved the Jews of Bulgaria from the Clutches of his Axis Ally Adolf Hitler" (2008), Gabriel M Nissim - "The man who stopped Hitler: The history of Dimitur Peshev who saved the Jews of an entire nation" (2002), Ĭosif Ilel - "The Rescue and Survival of the Bulgarian Jews in World War II and the Jewish Participation in the Wars of Bulgaria" (2010), "The People of Bulgaria" got Courage to Care Award award in 1998 which is given to honor rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust (accepted by President Petar Stoyanov). The term is commonly used by the rescued Jews themselfs, and by other autors. It has a place as a separate article. We can extend it and improve it, if you do not revert all the changes. I understand that most of the content in the current variant of the article is yours, but this feeling of ownership and anti-Bulgarian views ("the Bulgarians were happy for them to be killed"), but they are blurring your neutral attitude to the subject of the article. Nor Sage, nor Ragaru are significant enough for us to accept their research as "pure coin". Sage does not even know what Bulgarian Jews means. --StanProg (talk) 23:07, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @StanProg: All these books (and their various biases and shortcomings) are discussed in this article already, and in the citations. None of them is written by neutral academic historian. One of them is a children's book! All of them are older than any of the material I and others have cited. Sage is the author of a whole chapter in a canonical encyclopaedia in the field of Holocaust studies, the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 and is published in a journal series Holocaust Historiography in Eastern Europe (Part I) published by The Institute for Holocaust Research at the University of Haifa. The only POV on show is yours. As for the "happy to be killed" yes, the reliable sources state clearly that the Bulgarian government was happy for the Bulgarian Jews overseas to be killed by the Germans, just so long as Bulgarians were appointed to seize their confiscated property, and that this happened in November 1943. If you had read the sources, as I have long encouraged you to do, you would know that. GPinkerton (talk) 23:36, 18 April 2020 (UTC) Here's a notes on a conference from 2001 in which prof. Paul Bookbinder, an exprert in Weimar & Nazi Germany, was a speaker: [7]. They are talking about saving of the Jews.--StanProg (talk) 23:37, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @GPinkerton: I have read all your public sources. And the information added by you does not correspond to them. Two if your sources mention pro-German government, and you you've added instead pro-Nazi government. Maybe you should start reading all the contentof your sources, not just the one that corresponds to your personal opinion and the POV you're trying to push by selectively adding information. Can you please, quote me in which source it says that the Bulgarians and the Bulgarian government were happy? I'd like to see the word happy. --StanProg (talk) 23:43, 18 April 2020 (UTC) @StanProg: The thing you have linked to is what's called a blog. As you mention, he's no expert on Bulgaria and this opinion piece is not a published work. Here's a real academic article, published less than two years ago. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108565776.004 It says: "Under both Sofia’s communists and post- communists this narrative has been a consistently self- celebratory one. Yet it has also been reinforced by western writers, as exemplified by Michael Bar-Zohar’s 1998 Beyond Hitler’s Grasp. From this perspective indeed, the “good” Bulgarians would come off better than the lacklustre Greeks, who failed to come to the assistance of the far more significant Salonika community. Yet there is a paradox here in itself. ... What the expert scholars will quickly point out, however, is the omission from this record of the approximately 11,400 technically Greek Jewish citizens who were rounded up in Bulgarian-annexed Thrace and western Macedonia (territories the Bulgarians referred to as Belomorie) in early March 1943 before the main projected Sofia deportations. Nearly all these long-settled Jews, ... perished on arrival in Treblinka." As per WP:RSC, non-public access sources are quite proper, and the fact you are ignorant of the source material because you refuse to read it is your problem not mine. If you had read any literature, you would know why you are wrong. GPinkerton (talk) 23:55, 18 April 2020 (UTC) I know that they are quite proper, I'm wikipedian since 14 years with several hundred articles created and several thousand improved, most of them about the Bulgarian military history. I've read all the public ones, because the rest are either unavailable either paid. What's not proper is to call me Nazi, ignorant and few other epitets which have no place in Wikipedia. --StanProg (talk) 00:11, 19 April 2020 (UTC) @StanProg: No-one has called you ignorant or a Nazi. You have admitted that you are ignorant of the literature, not having read it. Your "improvements" to "the Bulgarian military history" in the present context makes your claims to have made constructive edits even more dubious. As does your repeated reversion of my edits on the grounds they were false or misrepresentative of the sources, which you now admit you had not read. You comment immediately above and the one further up about annexation proves your limited grasp of English. QED, as far as I'm concerned. GPinkerton (talk) 00:22, 19 April 2020 (UTC) Regarding your source above "11,400 technically Greek Jewish citizens". 11 343 Jews from Thrace, Macedonia and Pirot were deported, most of them were NOT Greek citizens, as 7144 were from Vardar Macedonia (Bitola & Skipje i.e. Yugoslav citizens) and there were some from Pirot as well. Acutally the Greek citizens were a minor part of them. The fact that this "reliable" author does not know that, makes me question the reliability of the whole material. --StanProg (talk) 00:43, 19 April 2020 (UTC) I mentioned "resettlement" and you said: Non-Nazis like myself and the reliable sources describe the "resettlement within Bulgaria" as "deportation", with which you indirectly called me a Nazi. Quote: "the fact you are ignorant" - and this after I told you that I have read all the public sources. I may not have a native-like English, but I understand pretty well what is insult and what not. --StanProg (talk) 00:43, 19 April 2020 (UTC) @StanProg: Please consult whatever dictionary you prefer for correct usage of the phrase "ignorant of". You are incontrovertibly ignorant of sources you have not read. I did not indirectly call you a Nazi, I correctly said you were repeating Nazi propaganda produced by the then Bulgarian government which aped the vocabulary of German Nazism, that is, using the word "resettlement" for the Holocaust. GPinkerton (talk) 00:53, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

• Move "The Holocaust in Bulgaria" is a much more neutral term, and a better title than the current one, which falls firmly on one side of what is clearly a contentious issue among historians. It'd be best to look to contemporary books and articles written by academic historians to try and find the current expert consensus on the issue. Modern sources should be preferred over older sources, and academic sources should be used instead of sources written by non-experts. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 22:41, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
• Move. It's a cherished myth, but it seems like modern scholarship calls for a more neutral title. GPinkerton's argument is convincing. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 23:39, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
  • I would also like to strongly suggest that both @StanProg and @GPinkerton back away from this discussion for a while; there is far more heat than light being generated. This decision doesn't have to be made quickly. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 00:50, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
    • Agree with jpgordon, both editors need to step away and cool down, for at least couple of months. I haven’t made my mind about the move or not yet. To me it’s more important to make the article better, than just rename it. Veni Markovski | Вени Марковски (talk) 01:07, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• Move to The Holocaust in Bulgaria, which is the title we use for other countries. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:52, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. The proposed title is misleading because of the word in. Bulgaria and the Holocaust is better. Note that the rescue of the Danish Jews wasn't 100% successful and that neither that title nor "rescue of the Bulgarian Jews" assigns credit for the "rescues". Srnec (talk) 04:15, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: Misleading why? The subject happened in Bulgaria. GPinkerton (talk) 04:19, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't think we should understand the occupied parts of Yugoslavia and Greece as Bulgaria. The Holocaust in Germany redirects to History of the Jews in Germany. The Holocaust in German-occupied Poland is at The Holocaust in Poland. Yes, all the other stuff not involving sending people to camps can be considered part of the Holocaust, too. But the word is strongly linked to murder (as the lead of The Holocaust shows). The title proposed by Buidhe—Bulgaria and the Holocaust—is broader and hence better, especially since Bulgaria is not exactly typical. Srnec (talk) 04:26, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

The point being that the Jews from Thrace and Macedonia were transported to Bulgaria, imprisoned there, and then deported to Treblinka from there. The decisions were taken in Sofia. The Sofia Jews were imprisoned in the same ghettos in Dupnitsa and Blagovegrad occupied temporarily by the murdered deportees from occupied Greece, &c. GPinkerton (talk) 04:33, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

• Move. That Jews in Bulgaria were treated less badly than other Axis countries does not exclude this from the Holocaust. Bulgarian authorities still sent "foreign" Jews to their deaths. Bulgarian authorities discriminated against "local" Jews, deported them, placed them under curfew, confiscated their property, and passed laws similar to the Nuremberg Laws. Bulgarian Jews who lived in Bulgaria during the Holocaust are legally recognized as Holocaust Survivors: [8].--Bob not snob (talk) 06:03, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• Move. There's nothing in the article to justify the use of the term "rescue", especially in an historical context where rescue actions have actually been carried out elsewhere (eg. in Denmark, as noted by the OP). In fact, "rescue" is the shortest section in the article, which reads by and large like a chronology of the events of the Holocaust in Bulgaria. François Robere (talk) 10:58, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
•  Comment: I see that a lot of editors that have voted see the article as one about the Holocoust in Bulgaria (1941 – 1944) as a whole or as an attempt to replace the historical truth about it's existence or it's extent. That's not the case. The article as indicated in the leading text is about historical event in spring 1943. There should be article that covers the Holocaust in Bulgaria, which should cover the whole period, but this one is related exclusively to a specific event. Unfortunately more than 50% of the article content was written by GPinkerton in the last month and most of his content is unrelated to the event in the spring of 1943 i.e. to the subject of the article. All this content could be moved in a a newly created The Holocaust in Bulgaria article. Also my attempt to extent the Rescue section was also reverted. This article should cover only the specific event, including of course the opinion of the Rescue deniers with their arguments. We can't deny the books in which this topic is main subject written by scholars (researches, professors in Universities, etc.), the articles, the memories of the rescued Jews, we can deny that the Courage to Care Award given to "The People of Bulgaria" as rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, we can't deny the Rescue memorial in Tel Aviv, Israel, Garden of the Bulgarian People, Jaffa, Israel dedicated to the rescuers, we can't deny the words of the Israeli President Reuven Rivlin "There is a special place of honor in Jewish history, reserved for the Bulgarian people who proved in their many that individuals have the power to change the course of history, and who helped to save the vast majority of Bulgaria’s Jews from the Nazi killing machine" [9], we can't deny either the words of the former Israeli president Shimon Peres "The saving of Bulgaria's Jews is a badge of honor for Bulgaria and that will stay with you forever. I am proud to open this exhibition here in the European parliament and I know that Europe today won't let the memory of the Holocaust be forgotten."[10]. That's all I want to say and this will be my last comment in this section. Please do not respond to it, but take some time to think about, check the facts and do not blindly believe a person that wrote more then half of this article content in a specific direction, with specific agenda. Regards. --StanProg (talk) 15:31, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• Move. (1) The rescue of Bulgarian Jews is part of the larger topic of the Holocaust in Bulgaria. the topic of how the majority of Jews in Bulgaria survived the Holocaust needs to be seen in the context of that event. (2) The Holocaust in <country> is a name of most (all?) articles dealing with the Holocaust in specific countries. Moving the content of this article to the currently redirected heading The Holocaust in Bulgaria would include this information in an article with a standard naming convention that most people interested in looking for events of the Holocaust by country are already familiar with. -Chefallen (talk) 16:49, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• Move per Sarah and Chefallen. --Ealdgyth (talk) 17:30, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• Strong Move Oppose (with condition), this is clearly a hagiographic article. Bulgaria deported 11,000 Jews from territories it occupied; virtually all of them died in Treblinka. The "rescue" of Jews in core Bulgaria only deserves a section in Holocaust in Bulgaria or in Bulgaria and the Holocaust. I really don't understand the need to whitewash your own history. It never came to my mind, as a French, to write an article misleadingly called 'Rescue of the Jews in France' because 75% of them survived... Azerty82 (talk) 19:16, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

It has also never occurred to any Wikipedian to create an article on the Holocaust in Germany. Everybody seems very concerned that no reader come away with the correct impression that Bulgarian Jews were not deported (with a survival rate well north of 75%), but our current treatment of the Holocaust in Bulgaria mirrors that of Germany and is certainly better than that of the Holocaust in Finland. There is way too much focus on responsibility in this discussion, given that the current title doesn't assign any. Srnec (talk) 22:08, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: Rescue does imply someone was responsible; it's an active verb! Danish Jews were rescued by Danes and by Swedish neutrality. Bulgarian Jews were deported and massacred, in Greece, in Macedonia, in France, in Italy, and doubtless elsewhere. Several hundred Danish Jews were rescued from Theresienstadt. Precisely one Bulgarian Jew was rescued from Treblinka; the rest were not. GPinkerton (talk) 23:21, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it implies responsibility, but the present title does not assign it to the Bulgarian government.
Odd that when you say "Bulgarian Jews were deported and massacred" you have to follow up with "in Greece, in Macedonia, in France, in Italy", but the title you are proposing says "in Bulgaria". I don't believe in one size fits all. "The Holocaust in X" works in most cases, but it doesn't work in Denmark or Bulgaria's case. Since the proposed title redirects to a different article (parallel to the German case), I don't see this move as necessary. Good enough for Germany, good enough here. This article was never intended to be about the Holocaust in Bulgaria. I do, however, support a change in scope and a move to the broader title Bulgaria and the Holocaust. Srnec (talk) 00:06, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: Part of the wider genocide known as the Holocaust took place in Bulgaria. The nationality of the victims is really immaterial; the articles are organized by geography and by nation-state. By either definition, the Holocaust happened in Bulgaria. GPinkerton (talk) 00:11, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: (1) if the article Holocaust in Germany is missing, then it should be created; (2) Holocaust in Bulgaria is not a good title indeed, even if we are referring to territories occupied by Bulgaria. Otherwise, Holocaust in Poland should be renamed Holocaust in the Third Reich. The best solution would be to create Holocaust and Bulgaria and move the current to a section in the newly created article. Azerty82 (talk) 09:51, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

I have changed my vote from Move to Keep. As long as we have another article on the role of Bulgaria in the Holocaust, I see no issue regarding this one, which refers to a specific event. My concern is that the presence of this article as the only one about Bulgaria and Holocaust would mislead the reader into thinking that the Bulgarian government had no responsibility in the killing of Jews. Azerty82 (talk) 17:46, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

@Azerty82: The problem is that although the "rescue" is purported to be a single event, no-one can point to what event that would be or when it was. The king that approved, postponed, and then indefinitely postponed the deportations to Treblinka died of a heart attack and no-one subsequently gave the go-ahead before the war turned against Germany; the Allies, now bombing Sofia, threatened repercussions for the Holocaust. Either the Jews were "rescued", in which case the present article's subject is still about the parts of the Holocaust that eventually didn't happen (as well as those that did), or the Jews were not rescued and the article's subject is again about a thing which did not happen. GPinkerton (talk) 21:11, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose: Hitler pushed for deportation of all jews from Bulgaria and a law proposal was already made ready. However certain individuals acted quickly, raised awareness and prevented that to go in effect. Not all people could be saved but most were. This article explains the event. Having Holocaust in Bulgaria is fine, mentioning the save there is ok, claiming "the saving is not saving because it did not save everyone" is debatable but ok, forcing no-separate-article for the saving event is not ok. --Petar Petrov (talk) 11:58, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
• Move. One can not change the facts of history. Years of Indoctrination will not change them. The Bulgarian government was a determined collaborator of the Nazis. The nightmare began on September 1939. On September 16, 1939, the commander of the Bulgarian Police Colonel Atanas Pantav issued a directive stating that 4,022 foreign and stateless subjects were to leave the country's borders. stateless subjects=Jews. About 1,000 of the deportees who were either citizens without citizenship or expired Nansen passport were left without a destination to leave Bulgaria. Dozens of Jewish families were brought to the borders of Greece and Turkey and ordered to cross the border. The border guards, however, did not allow them to pass, and so the families were abandoned in the demilitarized area and fell victim to the border police atrocities. On January 23, 1941, the Law for the Protection of the Nation, which resembled Nuremberg Laws, was signed and published, violating the civil rights of the Jews of Bulgaria and restricting their social and economic activities. Bank accounts of Jewish citizens were blocked, they were denied voting rights, public positions were blocked, intermarriages were banned, and a cap was placed on the number of students in higher education institutions. Jews must not change their place of residence.

On March 1, 1941, Bulgaria joined the trilateral agreement between Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Japanese Empire, similar to Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, which joined the Alliance in November 1940. On this day, the German army entered Bulgaria without a fight and was enthusiastically received. The German army did not enter as an occupier, but as an ally who used Bulgaria's land as an exit base to conquer Yugoslavia and Greece. In exchange for joining, they were transferred to Bulgaria as a deposit, Thrace and Macedonia from Greece and Yugoslavia. The Bulgarian government has announced that it is giving up its jurisdiction to Jews who are Bulgarian citizens, Who do not reside in Bulgaria. Hundreds of Bulgarian civilian Jews, 178 of them in France, about 500 in Germany and Czechoslovakia and a few dozen in Greece and Yugoslavia were sent to extermination camps. Initially, 11,343 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace were annexed to Bulgaria and were not considered Bulgarian subjects because they were deprived of Bulgarian citizenship through special regulations.

On February 22, 1943, Alexander Belev, on behalf of the Bulgarian government, signed a clandestine agreement with Theodor Danker, on behalf of Nazi Germany, for the deportation of 20,000 Jews held by Bulgarians to the "German territories in the East" (the agreement was signed in Berlin, so Poland is defined as "East" Signed). In the agreement, the Bulgarian government undertook the entire logistical issue of deportation, including the expenses involved and includes payment to Germany for every deported Jew. On March 4, 1943, Bulgarian police officers and soldiers performed an "Aktion" all over Thrace, arresting the Jews. The detainees were beaten, their property looted and they were transported by open trains that went several days along Bulgaria to the Lom city on the Danube. On March 11, the Bulgarians carried out an "Aktion" in Macedonia, arresting Jews from Skopje, Monastir, Stip and the surrounding towns. In Macedonia, the detainees were also badly beaten by the Bulgarian soldiers and women were raped. The detainees were imprisoned in the area of the "Monopol" tobacco factory, which in Skopje was sent directly by train to the Treblinka camp. On March 14, Jews of Pirot were arrested and subsequently deported through the city of Lom along with Thrace detainees. 196 people from Macedonia's Jews who were deported survives the death camps and from Thrace Jews less than 100 people were survived.

The German version of the agreement signed between Alexander Belev and Theodore Danker states that Bulgaria consents to the deportation of 20,000 Jews from the annexed territories of Thrace and Macedonia, but in a translation to Bulgarian, the words: annexed territories was deleted and thus, a deportation of the Jews of "Old Bulgaria" was approved. In autocratic Bulgaria such a move could not have been carried out without the king's permission. After approval of the agreement, a list of 6,365 Jews from old "Bulgaria" was made for deportation. Preparation of the lists took place in complete secrecy as it was clear that there was opposition among the Bulgarian people. On March 6, Bulgarian police officers began to visit the houses of the Jews in the various Bulgarian cities, drawing up a numerical registration and instructing them to prepare kits for their deportation. On March 9, a deportation order was signed for an initial quota of 6,365 Bulgarian Jews. According to the Bulgarian Interior Ministry's records, the deportation is scheduled for deportation on the night of March 9 - 10. On the night of March 13, 2,500 Jews from Sofia were scheduled to be deported. On March 10, 1943, an "Aktion" was held in the field towns in Bulgaria, including in Plovdiv. Although written in the Ministry of the Interior quotas, most of the Jews were arrested in the cities where the Aktion was held. This was a testament to the true intent of Gabrovsky the interior minister. The residents were concentrated in the courtyards of the schools and public institutions in the various cities, and it was only at noon when the deportation suspension order arrived and they were released to their homes. The deportation order remains "suspended" and has never been revoked.

On May 26, some 20,000 Sofia Jews were deported to 20 towns and cities across Bulgaria, and the Bulgarian government hired 6 ferries to drive them to extermination camps.A group of politicians, headed by Dimo Kazasov, sent a letter to King Boris, threatening his personal responsibility for the results of the deportation. Metropolitan Stefan sent a personal letter to the King's Palace stating, "Don't pursue others as they will pursue you too." The deportation to the villages was carried out as planned on May 26, but the deportation to the extermination camps was repeatedly postponed and finally not carried out. Jewish deportations also occurred in other cities. On June 15, 1943, the Jews of Stara Zagora and Kazanelek were deported; on June 17, 1943, Jews of Varna and Burgas were deported. 3 concentration camps were run by the Bulgarian army: in Somovit and Kailika near Pleven and Chehlare near Chirpan. Detainees in the Kailika concentration camp, most of the deportees and thousands of forced laborers were released in September 1944, with the occupation of Bulgaria by the Red Army.Decisions to postpone deportation to extermination camps were made, among other things, against the backlash of the major fronts in the war in favor of the Allies In August 1943, King Boris III died a few days after returning from a meeting at Hitler's headquarters in which he expressed his absolute refusal to declare war on the Soviet Union and the active participation of the Bulgarian army in the campaign. After the king's death, the deportation of Jews from the kingdom stopped. The Bulgarian government gradually changed its policy towards the Jews of the kingdom and in August 1944 repealed the law for the protection of the nation. --Assayas (talk) 08:46, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

• Move. I am confounded by the opposes here. On reading the Holocaust Rememberance Project: Bulgaria page I see that obsfucation of the Holocaust in Bulgaria is an issue in far-right and royalist circles. Bulgaria was a Nazi ally, and its persecution of Jews in Bulgaria, territories occupied by Bulgaria, and Bulgarian Jews outside of Bulgaria is well documented.--Eostrix (talk) 08:52, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

  I postedWikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Bulgarian Holocaust: personal attacks and canvassing concerning this RM.--Eostrix (talk) 09:38, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

• Neither Move, nor Oppose. Split it. Move. Veni Markovski | Вени Марковски (talk) 21:43, 23 April 2020 (UTC) I've changed my vote, and would encourage my fellow Bulgarian Wikipedians to also consider voting for move, as part of the broader conversation that we need to have within the Wikipedia community on the history of that period. At the same time, I'd kindly urge all interested parties to continue to contribute positively, and avoid unnecessary ad hominem attacks, which are not helping in improving the article, or in having a civilized dialogue on the talk page. I'd like to also thank François Robere for the comment below.Veni Markovski | Вени Марковски (talk) 21:02, 23 April 2020 (UTC) (Previous explanation of previous vote: IMHO, the article needs to be split in two - the first part should go to a newly-created article “Bulgaria and the Holocaust”, and the second part should remain as “Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews”. The deportation of 11,343 people (both a military crime, and a crime against humanity) is beyond doubts the climax of the antisemitic policy of the pro-Nazi regime of king Boris and Bogdan Filov. This policy is well documented, and it needs a separate article, where more details should be shared. The efforts of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, leaders from the public and political life of the country, which halted the deportation of the rest of the Jews, are also well documented, and they need to remain in the current article. Keeping these two different topics in one article is not precise. Moving the article, as it is, won’t make it better, but same would happen if we keep it as it is, that’s why I believe splitting it is the best option.Veni Markovski | Вени Марковски (talk) 09:31, 21 April 2020 (UTC))

@Вени Марковски: Thank-you for this measured and very reasonable intervention Veni. GPinkerton (talk) 22:07, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: Welcome. For what it's worth, I also apologized to you on this page.Veni Markovski | Вени Марковски (talk) 21:00, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

• Split it. I have changed my opinion. This is better solution, or if it is not possible, then a second option is Move to Bulgaria and Holocaust. Jingiby (talk) 10:39, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
  • On what grounds? Per WP:SPLIT a section should have "a length that is out of proportion to the rest of the article" (or even just a potential for such) to justify a split, but the whole "rescue" section is just 200 words out of >4000. What are you going to split? François Robere (talk) 15:52, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
• Opposed to split, as for those now suggesting a split and retaining Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, a brief inspection of the literature on the subject shows that the rescue narrative is a national myth or legend: [11] [12].--Eostrix (talk) 14:52, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Your second link supports the "rescue" terminology. The fact that it also supports the "myth" terminology is unsurprising. There can be both a rescue myth and a real rescue, just as a country can have a foundation myth while still having really been founded. Srnec (talk) 15:44, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

@Srnec: Noting incorrectly in this case. The author of that document never uncritically refers to rescue as a fact, only as a narrative, and certainly not so much as to support Wikipedia's treatment of the Holocaust in Bulgaria purely as "rescue" in the title of the page. GPinkerton (talk) 16:16, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

• How about this article: Stephen Reicher et al., Saving Bulgaria's Jews: an analysis of social identity and the mobilisation of social solidarity. European Journal of Social Psychology. Volume 36, Issue 1, January/February 2006, Pages 49-72. Jingiby (talk) 17:41, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jingiby: Did you read it? It's a psychology article about the public statements of those that either did or tried to rescue Jews. You can see that the title deliberately avoided the phrase "Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews", a phrase which also nowhere appears in the text. You can see that the historical references in the bibliography are mostly, where related at all to history, 20th century, and it cannot have benefited from any 21st century scholarship, even if it were an history paper, which it is not, and it should not be represented as such. GPinkerton (talk) 19:06, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Is this all about? "Saving" instead of "rescuing"? --Petar Petrov (talk) 21:16, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

It is placing undue emphasis on the aspect of the March deportation not being carried out, while ignoring the wider context. The deportation itself was planned by the Nazi-allied Bulgarian government that carried out numerous anti-Jewish actions.--Bob not snob (talk) 05:47, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

The deportation was not carried out in March, it was not carried out in April, it was not carried out in May and so on, it was "postponed indefinitely". That's how the people were saved. What is due or undue emphasis is debatable and that debate should be explained in the aricle. But forcing no-article is trying to force the debate over in favour of one side, like there is only one PoV. --Petar Petrov (talk) 10:46, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

@Петър Петров: The deportation was carried out in March, and in that month Bulgaria caused and paid for the deaths of more than 11,000 entirely innocent Jewish civilians, who before their deaths were imprisoned and maltreated for many days at Dupnitsa and Blagoevgrad by the Bulgarian government officials, police, army, and state railway company. Then they were deported to Lom and handed over to the Nazis, along with several million leva. It cannot be denied. 14:38, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

The deportation of 48000 people was not carried out. They were targeted but "postponed". These are the facts (as far as I know nobody is arguing about that). The entire voting here is about how the facts should be interpretted. Wikipedia does not dictate how the facts should be seen, it aims to show the viewpoints and that is why an article should exist. --Petar Petrov (talk) 21:53, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

@Петър Петров: And after they were not deported from Bulgaria like the 11,000 Jews were, the 48,000 Jews were deported from the cities, made to do more slave labour, and forced to live in ghettos until September 1944. That is the kind of thing that is meant when the words Holocaust in Bulgaria are said. GPinkerton (talk) 00:05, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

The 48000 were not deported to Germany to certain death (they were targeted together with the 11000). That is what is meant by "saved". --Petar Petrov (talk) 07:07, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Петър Петров: This then is some special use of the word "saved", where "salvation" involved imprisonment, dispossession, confiscation, ghettoization and slave labour. We do not use this word this way in English. GPinkerton (talk) 16:23, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Schindler's List. --Petar Petrov (talk) 18:55, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Петър Петров: While Schindler paid out his fortune to employ the Jews who worked for him, Bulgaria paid 250 marks for every Jew Germany killed for Bulgaria. Bulgaria was a Holocaust perpetrator; Schindler is considered Righteous Among the Nations along with 626 other individual Germans and 20 individual Bulgarians. GPinkerton (talk) 21:44, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't see the point of repeating the same arguments. I'm not going to address your last claims because the discussion is already huge and way offtopic. I do not deny your right to believe in anything you awant. I will state my point for one last time: the article of saving the 40000 Bulgarians should exist and detail the facts. There should also be a section with interpretation of these facts from the various notable PoVs: the official position of Bulgaria, the sources for your opinion etc. --Petar Petrov (talk) 23:12, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Петър Петров: I am not disputing that the facts should be detailed. The POV interpretation of "rescue" deserves a section where the Bulgarian official position is detailed, and the article deserves to be called the factual, neutral, "Holocaust in Bulgaria", just like every other country allied to the Nazis or occupied by them. GPinkerton (talk) 23:34, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

• In my opinion, the truth is as always in the middle: Ethan J. Hollander, The Final Solution in Bulgaria and Romania: A Comparative Perspective, SAGE Journals; Vol 22, Issue 2, May 1, 2008: This observation has fascinating moral implications, since it suggests that countries could only protect their own citizens by cooperating with Nazi Germany. It also illustrates that far from being passive subjects of coercion, weak states in imperial relationships can actually bargain to change the terms of their own subjugation. Jingiby (talk) 06:09, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jingiby: Again, did you read the article? It says: "about 18 percent of Bulgaria’s Jews were deported or killed" and mentions "the loss of fourteen thousand individual Jewish lives in Bulgaria". (emphasis added) It also discusses the allegations in various media that there was a "rescue of the Romanian Jews" because 50% of Romania's Jews also did not die. This is not an argument for having a "rescue" article for either country. GPinkerton (talk) 14:32, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton, I have already changed my opinion from Oppose to Split or to move to Bulgaria and the Holocaust, but I still oppose to the move Holocaust in Bulgaria. Jingiby (talk) 16:04, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. IMHO GPinkerton objects the very notability here. This article is about the historical event, unambiguously defined in time and place and subject to many publications, albeit some editors consider it "national myth or legend". Why don't simply create a new, more general article (I personally support Bulgaria and the Holocaust) to include all facts said so far? --Ket (talk) 12:46, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Ket: Could you you explain how the "historical event, unambiguously defined in time and place" can be described as such? When did the "rescue" happen? Who did it? Where did they do it? What did it consist of? How come the Holocaust in Bulgaria (also referred to by many and more reliable and neutral publications than any uncritical "rescue" is) continued for another eighteen months? How come even after Boris died the Bulgarians refused to do anything to help the Bulgarian Jews arrested all over Europe? How come the Bulgarian government was still seizing property confiscated from Bulgarian Jews in France and Italy in November 1943? There is no evidence that Boris changed his mind about killing the Jews, and there is no evidence anyone persuaded him to do so, and after the time period in which the rescue is supposed to have taken place, the situation of the Bulgarian Jews got far worse, many were killed, and their situation did not get better until after the Red Army arrived. You are right to suggest the rescue narrative is not notable outside the context of the Holocaust in Bulgaria. GPinkerton (talk) 16:19, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

The lead section contains all the answers regarding when, who, where, etc. If you don't like those facts you are free to create another, more general article as suggested. And please do not dsitort what I said - it is you who implies that this is not a notable event, I maintain the opposite opinion. As for your expression about "Bulgarian responsibility for the Holocaust" - it needs to be proved--Ket (talk) 18:15, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Ket: It has already been proved, many times. If you would read the articles cited in the body of the Request Move, and those cited in the article - as you clearly have not - you will find that the Bulgarian tsar and the ministry of the interior arranged the deportations themselves, and paid the German state 250 reichsmarks for each Jew's transport through Austria to Poland. The Bulgarian army and gendarmery arrested the Jews, the Bulgarian interior ministry arranged the trains by which they were deported to Dupnitsa, Blagoevgrad, and Skopje, and from there to Lom, and it was they that hired the barges that took them from Lom to Vienna. It was also the Bulgarian interior ministry that organized the deportation of the Sofia Jews and their imprisonment in the ghettos established by the Bulgarian government at Berkovitsa, Burgas, Byala Slatina, Dupnitsa, Montana, Blagoevgrad, Haskovo, Karnobat, Kyustendil, Lukovit, Pleven, Razgrad, Ruse, Samokov, Shumen, Stara Zagora, Troyan, Varna, Vidin, and Vratsa. The Bulgarian ministry of the interior was also responsible for the operation of Somovit concentration camp were Jewish men women and children were imprisoned from May 1943 until August 1944. It was the Bulgarian ministry of public works the organized the slave labour of the Jews between May 1941 and September 1944. GPinkerton (talk) 20:58, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for that clarification, now I see how you understand the Holocaust (my understending is a bit different). But than this is a subject for a new article, in Bg Wiki we have one since 2006 - bg:Холокост в България. There is no point negaiting the event we have been discussing so far--Ket (talk) 08:32, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Well, of course if it is not a North Macedonian, it will be another one of our dearest neighbours. It just melts my heart to see how concerned GPinkerton is about exposing genocidal practices💘💘💘. Well, naturally not Turkey's own ones — but just because they don't exist, right? Turkey might have lost 4 mln Christians in less than 10 years, but they are most likely only misplaced. Got lost in a fog, joined a cult or just bought a ticket to Jamaica. Sure.

This is a clear case of hostile editing. VMORO 22:24, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

New title & lead paragraph

(Thanks to Red Slash for moving the page & thanks to everyone that contributed to the debate!)

I have reworded the lead paragraphs to introduce interim changes made necessary by the new title after the Request Move was completed. I based the initial wording on the text of The Holocaust in France. For the main body of the article I have a lot of detail that can be added on the ghettoization and internal deportations. Suggestions on how to proceed and how the subject overall should be introduced are welcome! GPinkerton (talk) 00:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Superb work. I retouched it up a bit.--Bob not snob (talk) 05:48, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Undue weight

Greetings,

I believe the article places undue weight on the deportation of of the Bulgarian jews from the territory of modern-day Macedonia. While this is a fact and it has to be mentioned, the fact is that none of the jews under the pre-1940 borders of Bulgaria were deported. Macedonia was at the time of the deportations occupied by Bulgaria, but was not part of its official territory. Again, I do not wish to minimize the complicity of King Boris III and the Bulgarian government in the deportation and extermination of over 11,000 jews. What I am trying to do is get the article to acknowledge the fact that all jews from the territory of Bulgaria prior to 1940 were in fact rescued. This is a fact. I believe that the article should either:

- Be renamed as it previously was: Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, but with important context in the lede - the fact that the jews in occupied Macedonia were deported and many others were sent to construction projects with harsh conditions in an effort to spare them the faith of death whilst at the same time appeasing Nazi Germany.

or

- Include tha Rescue portion in the lede or as a first section below it and place the necessary weight that the Rescue of the Jews from Bulgarian territory deserves.

I admit a certain degree of bias due to my nationality (being Bulgarian myself), but that does not make my points moot. I am looking forward to input. mezil (talk)

I support you, whenever you posted this.

There is a reason for this undue weight, and I do not believe for a second that it is called "Israel". Its name is rather "North Macedonia" and the motives are clear. Even though the article is much improved since 10 years ago, there is a lot left to ask.

Practically everything here is a blunt statement of a fact: The Jews were deported to the countryside. They could only take 30 kg. Punishments got harsher, etc. etc. This may be a good approach to writing articles sometimes, but this is not one of these times. It has been stated multiple times, including multiple times times 100 by Bar Zohar, that after the decision to halt the deportations, everyone in the Bulgarian government, Boris III most of all, were constantly lying through their teeth.

Every time Bekerle made an overture, he was given the explanation "we really need them, we don't have enough construction workers, so now they have to work on the railroad, even though we so so much want to send them to Poland, but as soon as they are done, we are gonna send them to you in a package, etc. etc. etc. etc." - time and again, time and again.

There is not even a single indication here that the deportation to the countryside was a tactical move that had no connection whatsoever with the Struma railway. The main reason for the deportation was to make the Jews "invisible" so that Sofia's version before the Germans could be at least half-believable.

I have seen several testimonies (one from Bar Zohar again, but not only) from deportees, and none of them claimed that they were treated harshly - or even disrespectfully - (even though I am certain some people somewhere were indeed mistreated. As few as they were, there were Antisemites in Bulgaria.) Instead, I have heard statements that deportees frequently played cards with the guards, were released to be with their families for weekends, etc. etc. etc.

What we instead observe here is overuse of formal arguments which are meant to prove what exactly? Antisemitism? That Bulgars are nasty? That Bulgars are tataro-fascists? I think we are just about there😉. And a formal argument is: They were deported. They worked heavy labour. Belev was mean (he was). Ergo, tataro-fascists. Will someone put his back into it and fix this mess? Even the timescale is all over the place now because of multiple conflicting edits. We see 1940, then 1943, then 1939, then 1942. A blessing. VMORO 22:05, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Biased and poorly written article, see below

The article needs a complete rewrite. And not the like last one, which brought it to this condition.

• Undue weight is given to highly critical sources.
• Highly positive sources are given no, if any attention. Please rewrite, while this time also taking into account, the books of Bar Zohar, Nissim, Oliver, Boyadzhieff, etc. etc. etc. etc.
• The article is very imbalanced and presents certain viewpoints at the expense of others.
• In particular, books written by witnesses have been ignored completely (Bar Zohar again, but not only).
• The article presents a very official picture of the events, relying almost entirely on official acts, laws and statements of the Bulgarian government. This does not explain and elucidate, but conceals and clouds considering that the country was a very reluctant member of the Axis. Again a reminder to potential editors that there was neither any intention nor any plan for Bulgaria to join. This only became necessary after the British-inspired coup in Belgrade.
• Please rewrite, this time also citing respectable sources that reference informal decisions, conversations, personal statements, etc. Different members of the Axis and/or German puppet governments may have held entirely different opinions and behaved in entirely diverging ways while having adopted the same regulatory basis described ad nauseum in the article. IN ORDER TO QUALIFY AS AN AXIS MEMBER OR PUPPET, YOU NEED TO HAVE ADOPTED ALL THE REGULATORY FRAMEWORK, is there still someone anyable to see that?
• Please rewrite with fewer crocodile tears and less fake genocidal outrage, both amply demonstrated by GPinkerton. If you really denounce genocide, start by denouncing the genocide committed by YOUR OWN people. If not, the moral judgments you throw left and right only make you look like someone with an agenda and ulterior motives.
• I have no idea why all of you congratulated yourselves on the edit😲. However, I will note here the endless number of assurances that "this is how it was" that have been made by GPinkerton. Bless his heart.
• And let's dispense with AGFs. In the last half a year, I have seen a number of edits that seem to be written by state agencies rather than actual users able to think for themselves. Everyone can guess who I am referring to — any autoritarian regime with expansionist ambitions and a thick wallet will be boarding on that train. VMORO 00:18, 27 May 2023 (UTC)