site.btaUCLA Professor Tells Students about Rescue of Bulgarian Jews

Prof. Todd Presner of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) told students of the Hillel organization at UCLA about the heroic act of the rescue of Bulgarian Jews, Katerina Jowid told BTA Friday. She is an environmental science students at UCLA and together with 60 other UCLA students participate in a project that traces and records the memories of Nazi death camp survivors.

Headed by Prof. Presner, the project has build one of the richest Holocaust archives at UCLA. The most documents were collected in the early months of the project. The few remaining survivors were young children in those days and some remember only what their parents have told them, said Jowid.

She told BTA: "Prof. Presner took out a map of Europe and said, Only one country on this map saved its Jews. Do you know which one it is? Some students suggested Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands... No, it was Bulgaria. It was the only European country that had the courage to stand up and rescue its Jews, some 50,000 of them, said Prof. Presner. He talked extensively about the history of Bulgaria, King Boris, the role of the church, the military and society in this heroic act. In conclusion, he said that among the people whose memories we will be recording, will be representatives of various nationalities but no Bulgarians."

Bulgaria will be marking the 80th anniversary of the salvation of Bulgarian Jews in 2023.

The anniversary raises many historical and historiographical questions and discussions for historians and society about who the rescuers were, what made this great humanitarian act possible and why it happened in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), in partnership with the Alef Jewish-Bulgarian Cooperation Center, set itself the task of answering these questions with the help of prominent scholars, public figures, and experts on the subject with a series of articles to recall the events of the past and the participants in them, and to present the importance of the rescue and the rescuers. Bulgaria and Denmark are believed to be the only countries that did not allow their Jewish citizens to be deported to Nazi death camps. Nearly 50,000 lives were saved in Bulgaria.