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ON FEBRUARY 13, 1998, Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov accepted on behalf of his ex-Communist nation the Courage to Care Award, which the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had bestowed upon Bulgaria in recognition of the heroism of its people in saving Bulgarian Jews during World War II. Speaking at a meeting of the League's National Executive Committee in Palm Beach, Florida, the ADL National Director Abraham Foxman presented this prestigious award to President Stoyanov with words of deep gratitude: "Today I am here to say thank you - thank you to a people and a nation that unanimously said 'no' to the Nazi killing machine, 'no' to the deportation trains and concentration camps, and 'yes' to its 48,000 Jews."1 He praised the Bulgarian people who heroically saved the local Jews by preventing their deportation to Hitler's death camps, even though the Bulgarian government was allied with Nazi Germany during World War II. According to Mr. Foxman, this miraculous salvation of Bulgaria's Jewish community was made possible by the courageous leadership of Bulgarian King Boris III, "whose personal defiance of Hitler and refusal to supply troops to the Russian front or to cooperate with deportation requests set an example for his country"2 Thanking his host for this high honor, President Stoyanov replied with some modesty, "What happened then should not be seen as a miracle. My nation did what any decent nation, human being, man or woman, would have done in those circumstances .... The events of World War II have made the Bulgarian Jews forever the closest friends of my people."3 On March 11, 2003, Bulgaria's international image got an even bigger boost, when the U.S. Congress passed unanimously a resolution which praised Bulgarians and King Boris III for the wartime rescue of 50,000 local Jews.
This article will deal with a rather obscure historical event - the survival of Bulgaria's Jewish minority during World War II - that is little known even to those Americans who are more knowledgeable about the grim history of the Holocaust.4 Here, in a nutshell, are the basic facts of this extraordinary story: despite strong pressure from Berlin, none of prewar Bulgaria's 48,000 Jews were sent to die in the Nazi death camps (where, by contrast, at least 270,000 Jews from...