Thwarting The Eihrer

Outside
littler's

Grasp

Bulgarian Jewry
survived
the Nazis
because the
king and
the commoners
stood united.

MICHAEL BAR-ZOHAR
Special to The Jewish News

n March 9, 1943, long trains
of boxcars surreptitiously
moved into the railway sta-
tions of several Bulgarian
cities. At midnight they were supposed
to pick up 8,000 Bulgarian Jews, a first
shipment to the death camp of
Treblinka. The remaining 42,000 were
to follow in April and May.
But, in one of the more stunning
and rare chapters of World War II, a
united front of communists, church
officials and the monarchy, made it pose
sible for Bulgarian Jewry not only to
survive the Nazi onslaught, but actually
to grow. The•story offers a powerful les-
son about how popular domestic resis-
tance to Hitler might have stopped the
Nazi death march in other countries —
a lesson that may be relevant to today's
ethnic cleansing" agonies in Kosovo.

O

Bulgaria's
an
Pert
"the Je ish problemn
and other ?natters.

u

4/9

1999
gib."

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