Bulgaria’s Prime Minister has been praised for joining the commemoration of the deportation and mass murder of Macedonia’s Jewish community in 1943 – although critics said his failure to apologise for Bulgaria’s role in the events was regrettable.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov joined his Macedonian counterpart, Zoran Zaev, in Skopje on Monday to commemorate the deportation and extermination of the Jewish people from the territory of today’s Macedonia in the Nazi concentration camp of Treblinka in 1943.
It was the first time a Bulgarian Prime Minister had joined the remembrance ceremony dedicated to the 7,144 Macedonian Jews killed in the Nazi death camp.
However, Borissov fell short of delivering a hoped-for apology for the role of the then Kingdom of Bulgaria in the tragedy.
An ally of Nazi Germany during World War II, Bulgaria occupied Macedonia during the war, claiming it as Bulgarian territory.
“We grieve because we shall never forget. God bless their souls, they are forever in our memory,” Borissov, mentioning how the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and civil society in Bulgaria proper prevented the deportation of Bulgaria’s own Jewish community.
He warned against any repetition of the horrors of the Holocaust, or the more recent wars in the Balkans.
Macedonian Prime Minister Zaev praised Borissov for attending the event and said that his presence, and that of other government representatives from Bosnia and Romania, was a “historic, European, act of civilization.”
“Our unity in the commemoration and condemnation of the deportation of our fellow citizens in the death camp Treblinka is more than symbolic. Today, we mark the lessons from the past so that we can light our way to our jointly chosen future,” Zaev said.
“Hatred is not our choice. Accepting differences, love towards our close ones and respect towards the others, support, cooperation and friendship are the values that we embrace with our minds and hearts and keep through our deeds.”
Bulgaria prides itself on the way it stopped the deportation of more than 48,000 people of Jewish origin from the country in 1943.
What it usually neglects to add is that it did not save the lives of 11,343 Jews deported from northern Greece and the territory of the modern Republic of Macedonia, which were then under Bulgarian occupation.
However, Goran Sadikario, head of the Macedonian Holocaust Fund and Memorial Centre, told Bulgarian media agency BGNES on Sunday that he was glad the Bulgarian PM had come.
“This is a historic event and we salute Borisov’s courage to visit Macedonia at this day,” he said.
A representative of the Bulgarian Jewish community, Solomon Bali, was less complimentary. He welcomed the visit of PM Borissov as a move in the right direction, but said it did not go as far as it should have
“By not taking responsibility for the deportations that took place not only from Vardar Macedonia, but also from Pirot [in Serbia] and northern Greece, the visit amounts to nothing,” Bali, vice-president of the European branch of the global Jewish organization B’nai B’rith, told BIRN.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
