WILL HAVE A VOICE TO THE END

     Many know the story of how Denmark rescued 8000 Jews from the Nazis by smuggling them to Sweden in fishing boats.

     Few, however, know the story of how all 50,000 Bulgarian Jews were saved from the Nazis determination to carry out their extermination. For decades, all records were sealed by the Bulgarian Communists in an attempt to prevent glorification of the King of Bulgaria, the Church, and the non-Communist parliamentarians who at great personal risk stood up to the Germans. Until the Communist downfall in 1991, the story remained untold, the last great secret of the Holocaust era.

     In 1941, after a period of neutrality, Bulgaria allied itself with Nazi Germany. This was a decision partly motivated by the Bulgarian government’s wish to regain neighboring territories that it had lost in previous wars. Early in 1943, the government in Sofia signed a secret agreement with the Nazis to deport 20,000 Jews. The deportations were to start with Jews in the annexed territories.

     Metropolitan (Bishop) Stephan, the Head of the Sofian Church, and in practice, the highest ranking Bulgarian Church official during the Holocaust, and Metropolitan Kirill, the Head of the Church in the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv, vigorously opposed the anti-Jewish policies of the Bulgarian regime, and took active steps against its policy of deporting the Jews of Bulgaria and handing them over to the Germans.

     In early March, 1943 the Bulgarian Government decided to hand over the first group of 800 Jews from Sofia to the Germans. All the preparations had been made and the cattle cars were waiting in the capital’s train station. The Head of the Sofia Jewish Community, Abraham Alphasy, requested Metropolitan Stephan’s intervention. Stephan immediately traveled to the King’s Palace and asked to meet him. The King, aware of his request feigned illness to avoid him, but Stephan refused to leave the Palace until he met with the King. The King was forced to receive him and was asked by Stephan to postpone the decision to hand the Jews over to the Germans, or Stephan would instruct all churches and monasteries to open their doors to Jews, and give them a place to hide, thus violating the order of the authorities. The King gave in to Stephan’s demands, and after additional parties asked the Bulgarian Government to halt the deportation, the decision to deport the 800 Jews was postponed.

     Immediately after the postponing, between March 4 and March 11 of 1943, Nazi soldiers in Bulgaria rounded up thousands of Jews and prepared boxcars to take them to the Treblinka extermination camp in occupied Poland, where approximately 850,000 people (almost all Jews) perished.

     On March 10, boxcars were loaded with 8,500 Jews, including 1,500 from the city of Plovdiv. The bishop of Plovdiv, Metropolitan Kirill (later Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church), along with 300 church members, showed up at the station where the Jews were awaiting transport.

     It was a rainy, misty night. Out of the darkness, at 11:00 p.m., came Metropolitan Kirill. This seven foot figure, with his long flowing white beard hanging over his black robes immerges out of the fog, followed by 300 members of his congregation. They say his gate was so quick, so fast, the other men had to run just to keep up with him. He came to the entrance of the barbed wire enclosure. The SS guards pointed their machine guns at him, and said, “You can’t go in there, Father.” He laughed at them and brushed their machine guns aside and marched in, heading right for the train. His authority and courage were such that no one dared stop him and made his way to the Jews inside the boxcars.

     According to several accounts, as he reached them, he shouted a text from the Book of Ruth: “Wherever you go, I will go! Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people, and your God, my God!” Upon hearing this, the Jews cheered. They stood in awe, waiting to see what the Christian leader of Bulgaria would have to say to them in their moment of need and despair.

     Kirill whose protest had the blessing of Metropolitan Stephan of Sofia, the highest ranking Bulgarian Church official during the Hitler years opened one of the boxcars in which Jews had been packed like sardines and tried to get inside, but now SS officers stopped him. However, when one door was locked, often another door was opened. Kirill next walked to the front of the train, declaring he would lie down on the tracks if the train started to move. The train never left the station!

     Hence, the Jews of Bulgaria were spared the death camps of Nazism. Of the 50,000 Bulgarian Jews, some 40,000 went to Israel after the War.

     Metropolitan Stephan passed away in 1957, and Metropolitan Kirill in 1971. In 2003, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem recognized both bishops as Righteous Among the Nations.