To mark the 75th anniversary of the rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews, on 21 June a tree was planted in the Garden of the New University of Bulgaria (NUB) of Sofia, in honour of Dimitar Peshev, the deputy-president of the Bulgarian Parliament who, in March 1943, stopped the deportation of the 48,000 Jews of his country. The ceremony was attended by Gabriele Nissim, Gariwo chairman, who unveiled the figure of Peshev, retracing the relevant political and human events in his book L’uomo che fermò Hitler ("The Man Who Stopped Hitler", Mondadori, 1998): from the “awakening of conscience” thanks to the encounter with his childhood friend who warned him about the Jews’ fate, to the way he stepped in to avert their deportation, until the last years spent in solitude at the margins of social life.

The book, published in Bulgaria in a new edition (translated by Emilia Daskalova, and curated by Neli Radanova) was presented during a ceremony with the author, the historian Vesselin Metodiev and the actress and director Eva Volitzer.

Photos by Kossio Hadzhigenchev