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Russian embassy acknowledges contribution of Bulgarian people to the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews

Photo: EPA/BGNES

“We acknowledge the undisputed heroic contribution of the Bulgarian people, including representatives of the intelligentsia and the Orthodox church, in the fight against Nazism, including in the rescue of the Jews living in the country from the death camps,” reads a post on the Facebook profile of the Russian embassy, in response to the protest by the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry.

The same post expresses "serious concern" over the "incessant acts of vandalism" against the monument to the Soviet army in Sofia.

“Attention is being diverted from the resolution of the problem of the constant desecration of the monument to issues which are exceptionally important, but which are not connected with the issue directly,” the embassy of the Russian Federation says and urges the Bulgarian authorities to “finally” take the necessary steps to find the culprits and bring them to justice. 

A little after posting the acknowledgement of the contribution of the Bulgarian people to the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews during World War 2, the Russian embassy in Bulgaria posted to its profile the opinion of Mihail Myagkov, director of the Russian military historical society, who writes that the foreign ministry in Moscow was “absolutely right” in saying that the Soviet army had averted the deportation of the Jews from Bulgaria.

The deportation was prevented in 1943 thanks to the opposition of citizens and the position taken by the Bulgarian Orthodox church, civic organizations and Tsar Boris himself, Myagkov writes. However, in his opinion the main argument for the line of conduct of the Bulgarian authorities was the altered situation on the front and the victories of the Red Army at Stalingrad and Kursk. After the breakthrough in the war, the Bulgarian authorities were forced to look around for contacts with the Anti-Nazi coalition, and without the Red Army the Nazis would have forced them to take part in the Holocaust on their own territory, the Russian historian claims


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