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Honouring Dimitar Peshev in Washington

the debate runs the risk of distorting history

Dimitar Peshev

Dimitar Peshev

The Bulgarian embassy’s request to dedicate a crossroad in Washington to Dimitar Peshev sparked a fierce discussion between the City Hall, the Embassy itself and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., which was then taken up by Haaretz and The Washington Post

The discussion arose in December, when the Bulgarian Embassy sent a letter to the Washington Council asking them to name a crossroad after the Vice President of the Bulgarian President during the Nazi occupation, who rescued 48,000 Bulgarian Jews from deportation. In fact, Peshev, soon after discovering the plans by King Boris III and Prime Minister Filov to deport the Jews into the Nazi death camps, got the country’s Deputies to sign a protest letter and broke into the office of the Interior Minister to stop the trains headed for the camps. For this rescue did Dimitar Peshev was awarded the title of Righteous among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Museum. The row was sparked by the letter’s assertion that Bulgaria treated the Jews well during World War Two. 

The Holocaust Museum in Washington stated that the request from the Bulgarian Embassy is evading far more complex historical events, and every honour should be considered within a broader context. In particular they protest the letter’s definition of Bulgaria as “Nazi-occupied country” and the assertion that no Bulgarian Jew was deported to the death camps – keeping silent on the deportation of over 11,000 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace

The Museum perceived these words as an attempt to evade the history of the Bulgarian Jewish Community in favour of the country’s government. 

It further emphasized its opposition during a conference held last March, on the 70th anniversary of the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, when the Bulgarian Parliament condemned the deportation of the Jews from Thrace and Macedonia, though without taking up its historical responsibility – stating that the government did not have the opportunity to stop this decision. 

The Bulgarian Ambassador in Washington, Elena Poptodorova, felt “insulted” by the words of the Museum. “The request has only to do with Dimitar Peshev – she said – without any attempt to solve much greater problems and issues”. The Washington City Council will decide whether to honour Peshev on 28 May. “To me, the focus here is whether Dimitar Peshev should be honored with a ceremonial street naming, - said DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson - not about the rhetoric that the Bulgarian Embassy may have used or the rhetoric of the Holocaust museum”. 



Gabriele Nissim, Chairman of Gariwo and author of the book L’uomo che fermò Hitler (the man who stopped Hitler) devoted to the figure of Dimitar Peshev, has written a letter to Mr. Mendelson, which will be sent to all DC council members (available in the box below). Nissim recalls that Dimitar Peshev has been the only politician of a filo-German country to dare stop the deportation of Jews, and that his example is essential for Holocaust remembrance. 

The history of Bulgaria is certainly more complex, but this confusion is yielding a paradoxical result. Trying to stem any possible attempts to rehabilitate King Boris before history and the world’s public opinion, thus forbetting about the deportation of the Jews from Thrace and Macedonia –by opposing the naming of a square after Peshev, is provoking confusion about the rescuers’ figures. Peshev managed to rescue only the Bulgarian Jews and not those from Thrace and Macedonia, but that was not his fault. 

Hence, the decision was made by Boris III and Prime Minister Filov, who failed to stop the deportation of Jews from the occupied territories and instead tried to hinder Peshev’s action. Instead of blaming the behaviour of the Bulgarian government a row arose against Dimitar Peshev, which runs the risk of overshadowing his role in the rescue of the Jews.

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