JEWISH COMMUNITY - BITOLA

Category: Jews and Holocaust in Macedonia

This video is uploaded in honour of the thousands of Macedonian Jews who where murdered at the hands of Bulgarian Nazis during WWII. It is also a response to Bulgarian rednecks and Holocaust deniers who try to whitewash Bulgarian Nazis by denying Bulgaria's active role in the Final Solution and the extermination of the Macedonian Jews. Bulgarian anti-Semitism and the Bulgarian genocide of the Macedonian Jews is well documented. What is not as thoroughly understood are the causes and events that drove the Bulgarian state to such madness and unspeakable acts of cruelty leading to crimes against humanity. For this to be thoroughly understood we need to dissect the ideas that underpinned Bulgarian Nazism during WWII. The roots of such Bulgarian Nazi ideas precede the Second World War. In 1878 the Bulgarian state was created out of the ashes of the war between Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The Congress of Berlin, which was a meeting of all the major European players in 1878, endorsed the Treaty of Berlin that sanctioned the existence of new contemporary entities - Bulgaria, Rumelia and Macedonia. These entites were to each have their own degrees of self-government under Ottoman tutelage. Bulgaria achieved autonomy, Rumelia was quasi-autonomous and Macedonia gained minimal self-governance that was subsequently not implemented. Bulgaria regarded the Treaty of Berlin as a stab in the back, a betrayal of the desire to create a greater Bulgaria that included people and lands that were not Bulgarian. Bulgaria's resentment of the Treaty of Berlin, and later the Macedonian state and people, was founded on the desire to implement the Treaty of San Stefano which preceded the Treaty of Berlin. The Russian Count Ignatiev was the architect of the Treaty of San Stefano which was essentially an ambit claim that was never expected to make it off the drawing board in light of Russian admissions that not all the people within "San Stefano Bulgaria" were Bulgarian. This did not prevent Bulgarian nationalists from seizing upon the notion of San Stefano Bulgaria as some sort of Magna Carta of the Bulgarian state. Achieving a Greater Bulgaria or San Stefano Bulgaria became the national Bulgarian ideal - the strive to enlarge Bulgaria by incorporating non-Bulgarian lands and people, by whatever means necessary including brute force and genocide. Just as Hitler regarded Tacitus' definition of Germania as the basis for expanding the Third Reich, so did the Bulgarian Tsar Boris look to San Stefano Bulgaria as the promised land of the Bulgarian people. As events of WWII later showed, Tsar Boris set out to achieve San Stefano Bulgaria in the same way Hitler expanded the Third Reich - warmongering and genocide. Bulgarian Nazis felt that non-Bulgarians were a danger and a menace to the stability of the newly enlarged Bulgarian state. Bulgarian Nazis deployed terror and genocide against non-Bulgarians with the intention of creating an ethnically "pure Bulgarian Empire." Bulgarian Nazis regarded an ethnically pure Bulgaria as an insurance policy against subsequent attempts to challenge San Stefano Bulgaria with another "Treaty of Berlin" that might present itself at a later time. As such it was not just Macedonians, Greeks or Serbs who were a threat to sustaining San Stefano Bulgaria. The Jews were also regarded as an obstacle by Bulgarian Nazis. The Bulgarian Government enacted anti-Semitic laws that were followed by the Bulgarian deportation and murder of the Macedonian Jews. The Bulgarian government even paid substantial monies to the Third Reich for the extermination of the Macedonian and Bulgarian Jews. The Bulgarian Jews were saved by an act of God, so to speak. Through dumb luck the Bulgarian Jews were spared from extermination as the result of a delay in the deportation trains. The Macedonian Jews were not so lucky. The Macedonian Jews were often dragged kicking and screaming by Bulgarian Nazis who helped themselves to the valuables and assets of the Holocaust victims. The Bulgarian Government still refuses to apologise and offer restitution to Macedonia and Israel over the Bulgarian genocide of the Macedonian Jews. After Bulgaria's defeat in WWII the Bulgarian communists seized upon the activism of Bulgaria's equivalent of Oskar Schindler - Dimitar Peshev - and certain members of the Bulgarian clergy, with the intent of forging the memory of Bulgaria as the saviour of the Jews. This is a camouflaged form of Holocaust denial by the Bulgarian state. The memories of the Macedonian Jewish Holocaust survivors in this video are drastically at odds with the official Bulgarian account regarding WWII and the Holocaust. Macedonian Holocaust survivors today remember Bulgarian Nazis as murderers of the Macedonian Jews and not as their saviours. R.I.P. to the Macedonian Jews that did not survive the Holocaust. They deserve better than the disrespect they...

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