Archive for May 2009
Bulgarian Jews & the Holocaust
The fate of the Bulgarian Jews
During the Holocaust
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The history of Jews in Bulgaria predates both that of the Bulgars and the Slavs in the region. Jews formed a vibrant community during the Middle Ages, and were respected by many of the ruling leaders of the day, one of the Tsars even married a Jewish woman who later became known as Queen Theodora.
The largest part of the Bulgarian Jewish community before the 15th century belonged to the Byzantine (Romaniot) Jewish rite. Only a minority spoke Bulgarian. The Romaniots had their own customs and even maintained a special prayer book, which eventually was replaced by the Sephardi prayer book.
The largest influx of Jews to the Balkans began after 1492, when they were driven away from Spain. At this point, the Turkish sultan allowed the refugees to settle in the Ottoman Empire, and they were tolerantly treated both by the authorities and by the population of the Peninsula as a whole.
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These migrants came to be known as Sefarades, whose language came from Spanish and who now constitute 90 per cent of the Bulgarian Jews. Besides, the following centuries saw the migration to Bulgaria of Ashkenazi Jews, mainly from the German lands. Unlike the Sefarades, they were received with hostility, which eventually waned with time.
In the 17th century, the ideas of Sabbatai Zevi became popular in Bulgaria, with supporters of his movement like Nathan of Gaza and Samuel Primo being active in Sofia. Jews continued to settle in various parts of the country (such as the new trade centres like Pazardzhik), extending their economic activities due to the privileges they were given and the banishment of many Ragusan merchants after they took part in the Chiprovtsi Uprising of 1688.
Jews were drafted in the Bulgarian Army and participated in the Serco-Bulgarian War in 1885. The Treaty of Neuilly after World War I emphasized their equality, but nevertheless anti-Semitism began to spread and was indirectly introduced by the governments of the time, particularly after 1923 and the government of Aleksandar Tsankov.
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By the 1930s, there was a slight increase in incidents of anti-Semitism, however there remained a generally high level of tolerance of all minorities, including the Jews. The peasants – the largest single element of the population – were by and large not anti-Semitic; Jews were more likely to be innkeepers than rent collectors.
Some anti-Semitism was brought back from Vienna and Berlin by returning students, but their impact was limited. There were also a few small fascist groups, but they did not find fertile soil even when they received German backing for their efforts; indeed, they tended to be closer to the Italian than to the German model, and again generally were not anti-Semitic.
In addition, there were publications and demonstrations against both fascism and anti-Semitism.
As World War II began, the government became more fascist and pro-German than before – but major figures in the cabinet, including the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, had pro-western leanings. In the wake of a political crisis in 1939-40, King Boris named a pro-German Prime Minister in February 1940.
Read more here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/bulgarianjews.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
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Brave Act of Resistance at Treblinka
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Meir Berliner was a citizen of Argentina who was visiting Warsaw with his wife and daughter when the Second World War broke out. Meir and his family were taken to Treblinka death camp.
Meir Berliner had arrived in Treblinka from Warsaw a few days before in one of the transports of the so called "Big Action" At that time it was the practice to take out several hundred people from each transport to work arranging the belongings of the murdered; the same day or a few days later, the group was liquidated and was replaced by other people selected from new shipments.
As the arrivals passed the large number of piles of clothing scattered everywhere, they became suspicious. They were never given time to think, discuss, or plan a response. The transports from the East, carrying Jews who suspected their fate, were met by brute force, designed to induce shock and thus make revolt impossible. When those transports arrived, SS and Ukrainian police lashed out at the Jews with whips to hasten their departure from the trains.
Those who fell behind were immediately shot. The rest were, within hours of their arrival, selected for extermination, the separation of men from women, the stripping of clothes and valuables, and the marching or running to their deaths was completed.
Berliners wife and daughter were selected for the gas chamber, whilst he was selected to live and work. Abraham Krzepicki who escaped from the Treblinka death camp after eighteen days after being deported on the 25 August 1942, befriended Meir Berliner in the camp.
He gave his account to Rachel Auerbach during December 1942 and January 1943 in the Warsaw ghetto:
“I made the acquaintance of a Jew from Warsaw named Berliner. Berliner was about forty-five years old and had lived in Argentina for years. He had served in the Argentinean army and was an Argentinean citizen.
It would take us too far afield to relate how he had happened to be stranded in Poland, unable to enjoy the protection of his foreign citizenship, and how he, his wife and his daughter had come to Treblinka.
By the time I met him his family were no longer alive. They had entered the showers a week earlier, as soon as they had gotten out of the boxcar. He a dark-complexioned, broad shouldered, healthy man, happened to be among the lucky ones, he was one of the workers who had had their death sentences postponed for a week or two – perhaps even three.
Berliner was a man of real integrity, a true friend, at every opportunity he would share a bite to eat, a cigarette or a drink of water: if there was any chance to help some body out, he would come running. As a result he had become well-known and well-liked.
But in our talks in the woods about finding a way to escape, Berliner would not go along with us.
“We’d be killed. We’d be killed,” he would say. “But there is one thing I want: Revenge.”
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He did like the idea of jumping the Ukrainians and disarming them, but since most of the workers were opposed to this plan and no consensus could be reached, nothing came of it.
As we marched back to camp each night, our hearts grew heavy on the way. Would we be able to sleep through the night? We arrived at the guard station. The gate closed behind us. Once again we were on the territory of the Treblinka murder factory.
And so September 11 arrived.
That day, as usual, we bought food in the woods from the peasants. The Ukrainians came dragging two big baskets and everything was divided up according to the orders placed by the workers. Some of the young men brought brandy. Berliner, too, bought a bottle of brandy that day.
When we got back to the camp at about 6 o’clock that evening, our whole world turned black. Even from some distance away, we could see something new going on in the roll call square.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/berliner.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
The Story of Herschel Grynszpan
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Herschel Grynszpan was born on the 28 March 1921 in Hannover, Germany, to Zindel and Rivka Grynszpan. He was one of three children an elder sister named Esther and a brother Mordechai.
Zindel a tailor prospered and Herschel grew up an intelligent sensitive child, with few close friends and was an active member of the Bar-Kochba Jewish youth sports club in the city. He studied at a Yeshiva in Frankfurt-am-Main, but he returned to Hannover where he applied to emigrate to Palestine, but this was rejected due to his youth.
Herschel Grynszpan went to live with his uncle and aunt Abraham and Chawa Grynszpan in Paris in September 1936 via another uncle Wolf who was living in Belgium. He entered France illegally as he would not have been granted entry to France, as he had neither work, nor financial support.
He settled in Paris living in a small Yiddish speaking group of Polish Orthodox Jews. He spent the next two years in vain trying to stay in France legally but this was unsuccessful. His re-entry permit for Germany expired in April 1937 and his Polish passport expired nine months later leaving Herschel without any legal basis for staying in France.
During the same period under the Nazis Zindel Grynszpan’s business declined and the Nazis made life increasingly difficult for Jews living there, with ever increasing restrictive regulations.
The Grynszpan’s were among the estimated 12,000 Polish Jews arrested, by the Nazis, deprived of their property and herded abroad trains destined for the Polish border.
When they reached the border, they were forced to walk several kilometres to the Polish border town of Zbaszyn, called Neubentschen in German. Zindel sent Herschel a postcard from Zbaszyn telling Herschel what had happened and asking for him to rescue them, the postcard reached Herschel in Paris on the 3 November 1938.
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On the morning of the 7 November 1938 Herschel Grynszpan wrote a farewell postcard to his parents, which he never posted, bought a revolver and ammunition from a shop in Rue du Faubourg St Martin and caught a metro train to the Solferino metro station.
From there he went to the German Embassy at 78 Rue de Lille and asked, as a German citizen, to see an Embassy official. Herschel Grynszpan was shown into the office of junior official Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan shot vom Rath several times, as an act of protest in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews. He was arrested immediately by the French police.
Despite the best medical care vom Rath died on the 9 November 1938, he was given a state funeral in Dusseldorf attended by Adolf Hitler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.
The death of Ernst vom Rath was the catalyst for the Nazis to launch the Kristallnacht and on the night of 9 November 1938 the Storm Troopers took to the streets crying for vengeance.
The Brown-shirts invaded synagogues and Jewish shops and homes to break, burn and loot, in their wake leaving shards of glass and shattered windows. Nearly 100 Jews died in the night of violence and some 30,000 Jews were arrested and interned in concentration camps, many to die from the savage brutality within the camps. Grynszpan’s family who were in Poland were not affected by the murderous pogrom.
From November 1938 to June 1940 Herschel was imprisoned by the French in Fresnes Prison near Paris, before being moved to the prison in Toulouse. One month after the German occupation on the 18 July 1940 Grynszpan was transferred from the Toulouse Prison to the border of the un-occupied zone where he was taken back to Paris by SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Karl Boemelburg, who was tasked with bringing Grynszpan into captivity.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/grynszpan.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
