Introduction
It is becoming more and more evident that the Romanians, obviously with the moral support of the Germans, are utilizing the present period for handling the Jewish problem in their own way. I have it on good authority that Marshal Antonescu has stated . . . that “this is wartime, and a good time to settle the Jewish problem once and for all.”
FRANKLIN GUNTHER, US Envoy to Romania, November 4, 19411
Hitler was not without friends in the east, as Marshal Antonescu’s comments brazenly show. These allies contributed both to the German war effort and to the Nazi genocidal project. Yet their reasons for joining with Hitler represented a commonality of aims rather than lockstep ideological agreement. Indeed, relations between Hitler and the states allied to him were rarely congenial and usually unequal. By the end of the war, many of these same friends refused to cooperate with Hitler, albeit rarely for humanitarian reasons. As one scholar has noted, “The overpowering image of Hitler dominating Europe and his fixation on the destruction of the Jews hides the actual diversity that existed in Nazi-dominated Europe.”2 This chapter will explore the complexities of Hitler’s diplomatic alliances in Eastern Europe and the impact they had on the execution of the Holocaust in each, specifically Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria. I am intentionally not covering places like Croatia and Slovakia, which, while nominally allies of the Nazis, are better described as puppet states.3 While these states were willing collaborators in Nazi plans, such collaboration derived mainly from the dominant German influence there. Likewise, Nazi occupied states in which substantial collaboration took place (such as the Baltics and Ukraine) will be discussed later when we examine collaboration. Nazi-allied countries, however, retained a much greater degree of independence and were legitimate nation states; as such, they require a different treatment. I am also not addressing Hitler’s main allies of Italy and Japan as they are of lesser importance regarding the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. Italy focused its conquests on North Africa and, to a lesser extent, along the Adriatic while Japan, of course, was focused on Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
The chaos of the end of World War I resulted in the spread of conservative, totalitarian states in Eastern Europe with sizeable far right-wing organizations. These organizations and the authoritarian states in the East became more radical and more violent as a result. Only Czechoslovakia stood out with its democratic government. As a result, overtures of Nazi friendship fell on receptive ears in the East, not least due to the potential threat posed by the Soviet Union. In the interwar period, Germany cast about for allies and made inroads with its future allies through economic influence. Faced with the threat of Soviet influence, these countries reluctantly accepted German alignment instead, often agreeing to arrangements that benefited Germany. As a result, by 1939, a third of Romania’s exports went to Germany, half of Hungary’s and over two-thirds of Bulgaria’s. In addition, Germany became the primary supplier of these countries, providing 40 per cent of Romania’s imports, half of Hungary’s, and almost two-thirds of Bulgaria’s.4
Such economic dominance was exacerbated by the abandonment of these countries, particularly Romania, by their former allies, the French. The de facto concession of a sphere of influence in this region to Germany can even be seen in official documents. In January 1936, a British diplomat wrote:
Since I think everyone is now agreed that it is dangerous to sit indefinitely on the safety-valve, and that Germany must expand some. where, I feel that there is an overwhelming case for the view that the direction in which Germany can expand with a minimum of danger and inconvenience to British interests (whether political or economic) is in Central and South-Eastern Europe.5
Such policies made Germany the only major power with which the dictatorships of Eastern Europe could ally. Indeed, the idea of a “safety valve” evokes the policy of appeasement and the hope that Germany’s ambitions could be satisfied by concessions in Eastern Europe.
While Hitler’s eastern allies (Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria,) approached their relationships with Nazi Germany in different ways, we can begin with some generalizations that apply to all in varying degrees. First, these states were autonomous and had a great deal of freedom of action. Nazi Germany could not easily dictate their behavior and had to employ at least a minimum of diplomacy. This is important, as we will see that these states had the ability to refuse Nazi demands. Second, while antisemitism was alive and well in these countries, each looked to an alliance with Germany mainly to gain specific, local territorial concessions. They did not share a vision of massive expansion or global domination. Nor was the murder of the Jews a primary motivation. The threat of Soviet expansion proved a much greater motivator. Of course, the Nazi attitude toward the Jews allowed these nations to deal with their own “Jewish problems” as they so chose. Third, each of these countries featured an extreme right wing antisemitic revolutionary movement that would figure prominently in anti-Jewish measures and political responses. Powerful themes of national purification and ethnic community existed in all three. Finally, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, were all governed by forms of authoritarian, dictatorial, monarchies that, while deeply conservative, did not easily align with more extremist right-wing elements. With these general characteristics in mind, however, it is enlightening to examine how and why each of these nations came to be an ally of the Nazi state.
Romania—An Enthusiastic Partner
The way in which the Romanians are dealing with Jews lacks any methods. No objections could be raised against the numerous executions of Jews, but the technical preparations and the executions themselves were totally inadequate. The Romanians usually left the victims’ bodies where they were shot, without trying to bury them.
Einsatzgruppe Report, October 30, 19416
Romania was perhaps the most murderous of Hitler’s allies (and often described as more brutal, as in the above report). This situation was compounded by the fact that Romania had one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe. In 1930, 756, 930 Jews lived there, including those who lived in territory taken from Russia, Austria, and Hungary at the end of World War I.7 Romania was also a nation that demonstrated pronounced antisemitism. Throughout much of its history, antisemitism in the largely rural country had been religious and traditional in nature. Though traditional, it was still virulent and “had been a matter of international concern as far back as the nineteenth century.”8 The ultra-nationalist right-wing paramilitary group, the Iron Guard, included this traditional antisemitism in its platform. Indeed, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Guard was its “quasimystical identification with Romanian Orthodox Christianity.” A 1941 editorial emphasized, for example, that “The anti-Semitism of the young generation was not only racial struggle. It asserted the necessity of spiritual war, the Jews representing in their spirit amoral materialism, and the only salvation being embodied in Christianity.”9 The addition of the more modern “Judeo-Bolshevist” concept strengthened this religious antisemitism. Finally, a key element that enhanced the power of Romanian antisemitism was a desire for national ethnic purity. A right-wing ideologue adhered as early as 1909 to the slogan: “Romania for Romanians, all Romanians, and only Romanians.”10
The desire to reclaim lost territory also factored heavily in Romanian support for the Third Reich. Ever since the Balkan wars of 1912–13, Romania sought to enlarge its territory. In those wars, it had gained the province of Dobrudja in eastern Bulgaria. As a result of World War I, Romania added Transylvania in eastern Hungary and Bessarabia in western Russia. However, as a result of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Bukovina in southern Ukraine to the Soviet Union in 1940. Both Germany and the Soviet Union pressured Romania into surrendering this territory. Germany then compelled Romania, later that same year, to return the northern part of Transylvania to Hungary as part of a diplomatic arrangement between the Nazis and the Hungarians. Romania’s territorial gains were completely reversed when it was forced to also return Dobruja to Bulgaria; Romania had lost a large amount of territory and 30 percent of its population.11 These were shattering losses to King Carol II and to the Romanians as a whole. The extreme right was infuriated and soon acted.
In the interwar period, right wing nationalism and extremism swept across much of Eastern Europe. In Romania, Corneliu Codreanu capitalized on these sentiments. Born in 1919, Codreanu epitomized a generation of extremists (including Heinrich Himmler) who had been born too late to participate in World War I but harbored deep resentments about the war’s outcome and the state of their respective nations. An icon of the Archangel Michael allegedly inspired Codreanu in prison to create the Legion of Archangel Michael in June 1927. New members were given a bag of soil from Romanian battlefields to wear and were sworn in annually on the day dedicated to Saint Michael, thus conflating nationalist and religious meanings.12 Codreanu also embued his movement with an intense antisemitism. He feared a Jewish takeover of the state and wrote in his memoirs that “when I say ‘communists’ I mean Jews.”13 The paramilitary wing of the Legion would come to be known as the Iron Guard, and was established to fight communism, the common enemy of both Romania and the Church. This organization challenged the existing government, which it deemed not extreme enough.
King Carol II headed that authoritarian regime beneath a thin veneer of a constitutional monarchy. For the most part, the prime minister ruled with the consent of the King. This arrangement became legal reality in 1938, when a new constitution put the King at the head of a “royal dictatorship.”14 He attempted to appease the far right with antisemitic legislation, but was ultimately unsuccessful politically. The Iron Guard and the Legion continued to challenge his government. King Carol II then took action against them. The King had Codreanu arrested, along with many of his followers, eventually shooting them and dousing their bodies with acid in November 1938.15 However, even these harsh measures did not destroy the Iron Guard.
Two men, Horia Sima and Ion Antonescu, led an uprising after the loss of Transylvania. They formed what they called the “Legionary State” and forced King Carol II to abdicate in favor of his son, Michael. Under the Legionary State government, Romania joined the Axis, hoping to regain its lost territory. Antonescu became Prime Minister and commanded the Romanian Army. However, relations soured between him and the Iron Guard—led by Sima—which attempted a coup in January 1941. Antonescu crushed the uprising and much of the Iron Guard. Sima and surviving Iron Guard members fled to a somewhat sympathetic Nazi Germany.
At this point, Antonescu’s disagreements with the Iron Guard and Horia Sima were political, not ideological. Antonescu’s traditional antisemitic views were supplemented by his firm conviction in the Judeo-Bolshevist myth conflating Jews and Communists. In particular, he (and many other Romanians from all walks of life) blamed Jews for the loss of Bessarabia to the Soviets. He frequently used the term “Judeo-Bolshevik” in reference to the Russian-speaking Jews of that region.16 So, while Sima and many Iron Guard members sheltered in Germany, their ideology was very much alive in Romania and its new dictator.
Thus, Marshal Ion Antonescu would preside over Romania’s alliance with Hitler and involvement in the Holocaust. Ion Antonescu was a career military officer and a committed antisemite. His was a complex legacy. As one historian has commented, “He was a war criminal, sending tens of thousands of Jews to their death in Transnistria, and yet he refused to send other Romanian Jews to the death camps in Poland. He was an antisemite and yet, despite the deportations to Transnistria, more Jews survived under his rule than in any other country within Axis Europe.”17 In 1922, the French military attaché described Antonescu as possessing “a well-tried intelligence, brutal, duplicitous, very vain, a ferocious will to succeed . . . together with an extreme xenophobia.”18
This enigmatic character led Romania into war as a Nazi ally. Romania officially joined the Axis powers on November 23, 1940, for several reasons. First, it sought German protection from the Soviet Union, to whom it had already lost land (largely by German design). Indeed, a Romanian diplomat remarked to a British diplomat that “Nothing could put Romania on Germany’s side except the conviction that only Germany could keep the Soviets out of Romania.”19 Second, and following from the first, was the hope that Romania would regain its lost territory with Germany’s help (and influence over Hungary). Third, Romania was already closely tied economically to Germany, having agreed in 1939 to granting Germany 25 percent of its oil exports.20 Germany’s dependence on Romanian oil would increase dramatically as the war progressed. Romania became one of Nazi Germany’s closest allies. Hitler liked Antonescu and “no other leader Hitler met other than Mussolini ever received such consistently favorable comments from the German dictator.”21 Hermann Goering declared him to be “quite a stubborn mule but the only one in Romania who sticks to a pro-German line.”22 Romania supplied 585,000 soldiers to Hitler’s war on the Soviet Union and has been termed “on par with Italy as a principal ally of Germany and not in the category of minor Axis satellite.”23
The outbreak of the war on the Soviet Union proved not only Romania’s loyalty to Hitler, but also the lethal effects of its national variety of antisemitism. Romania has been singled out as a particularly brutal ally, not least because it carried out much of its anti-Jewish violence without pressure from the Nazis. When the Nazis attacked the USSR, Romanian Armies invaded and reconquered the territory of Bessarabia they had lost a year earlier. Romanian Deputy Prime Minister Mihai Antonescu (no relation) called for a “complete ethnic liberation.” “Let us be ruthless so as not to miss this opportunity. No one should allow himself to be seduced by humanitarian philosophy,” he declared, “The act of ethnic cleansing will involve removal or isolation of all Jews in labor camps, from which they will no longer exert their nefarious influence.”24 With this brutal philosophy ringing in their ears, Romanian troops entered Bessarabia. The Iasi pogrom (discussed in Chapter 6), which occurred a week after the invasion and within the pre-war borders of Romania, serves as evidence of the power and influence of Mihai Antonescu’s message. In addition, orders issued by Antonescu to the Army encouraged anti-Jewish violence as they were authorized to “do with the Jews’ lives and property as they saw fit ‘within the first 24 hours of the occupation.’”25 This guidance to the military very much resembled the criminal orders issued to the Wehrmacht prior to Operation Barbarossa.
Romania’s initial violence against Jews characterized much of their operations in the Soviet Union. In return for its participation in the war, Romania received the area between the rivers Bug and Dniester in what is now the country of Moldova. Included in this territory was the major city of Odessa on the Black Sea. Antonescu dubbed this new Romanian “province” Transnistria, with Odessa as its capital. Transnistria encompassed 24,840 square miles, an area roughly the size of Latvia.26 Before Romania could consolidate its new territory, disaster struck in Odessa. The city had been tenaciously defended and was not captured until October 16, 1941. Six days later, a delayed bomb left behind by the retreating Soviets exploded. The blast killed 67 people, including the Romanian Army commander of the city and many high-ranking officers. Antonescu responded immediately with fury, ordering on October 23 that “immediate retaliatory action, including the liquidation of 18,000 Jews in the ghettos and the hanging in the town squares of at least 100 Jews for every regimental sector.” The surviving chief of staff of the 4th Romanian Army replied the same day, reporting that “Retaliatory action has been taken within the city via shooting [and] hanging . . . the execution of the Jews in the ghettos is well on the way to reaching the aforementioned number.” The Romanians had declined the help of an SS Regiment in this endeavor.27 The Jewish population of Odessa at the time was approximately 80,000. The violence against them was beyond brutal. Jews were crowded into warehouses in a suburb of the city. Romanian soldiers and police surrounded and torched the buildings, shooting any Jews attempting to escape. A horrified Romanian officer reported that:
In an attempt to escape the agonies of the fire, some appeared at the windows and signaled to the soldiers to shoot them, pointing to their heads and hearts. But when they saw the guns pointed at them, they disappeared from the window for a brief moment, only to reappear a few seconds later and signal to the soldiers once again. Then they turned their backs to the window in order not to see the soldiers shooting at them . . . Some women threw their children out the window.28
On October 24, Marshal Antonescu issued a personal order, No. 563, that a group of Jews be forced into a building full of explosives and then blown up, in symbolic retaliation for the bombing of the headquarters. This order was dutifully carried out the next day at the precise time the original Soviet bomb had exploded.29 Romanians murdered approximately 20,000 Jews from Odessa during this massacre. The remainder was placed in ghettos.
Yet this killing paled in comparison to the larger plans that Antonescu had for Romanian Jews. Unlike the Nazis, who viewed the peoples they conquered in the East as primarily foreign and inferior, many Romanians saw the return of Bukovina and Bessarabia as the return of ancestral Romanian land. They also found much greater local support from ethnic Romanians.30 Thus, Antonescu sought to cleanse this Romanian territory of the Jews, whom he considered disloyal and alien. This had been his plan for quite some time. In September 1940, he had proclaimed that
I will solve the Jewish problem simultaneously with my reorganization of the state by gradually replacing Jews in the national economy with Romanian public servants . . . Jewish property shall be largely nationalized in exchange for indemnities . . . Jews will be allowed to live, yet they will not be allowed to capitalize on the resources of this country. Romanians must benefit first.31
By 1941, this plan had become even more radical. Antonescu decided that all Jews living in the reclaimed Romanian territories of Bessarabia and Bukovina should be killed or deported to Transnistria, which would serve as a dumping ground in much the same way as the Nazis envisioned the Generalgovernment earlier. On July 8, Antonescu told his ministers, “I am for the forced migration of the entire Jewish element from Bessarabia and Bukovina, which must be thrown over the border.”32 This planned ethnic cleansing is further apparent in the orders passed on by Romanian Army and police officials. The inspector General of the Gendarmerie, General Constantin Vasiliu told his men in Bessarabia that “The first measure you must undertake is cleansing the land. By cleansing the land we understand: exterminate on the spot all Jews in rural areas; imprison in ghettos all Jews in urban areas.”33 Such killings took place as early as July 9, after the Army was given an order “for the removal of the Judaic element from Bessarabian territory.”34 Throughout the newly occupied territories, Romanian forces murdered Jews. Yet carrying out an ethnic cleansing of Bessarabia and Bukovina was no small task; it would require the murder or deportation of 277,000 Jews as well as the Roma, who were also targeted by the regime for removal.35 Transit camps and ghettos were established in Bessarabia and elsewhere in anticipation of deportations to Transnistria.
While local pogroms and mass killings continued, between 147,712 and 170,737 Romanian Jews were deported to Transnistria from newly reoccupied territories.36 Both the journey and the conditions in Transnistria were appalling and lethal. Romanian soldiers and police forced the Jews on long, forced marches to crossing points over the Dniester and Bug rivers into Transnistria. Guards shot those who could not keep up and roving bands of local villagers robbed the marchers. The roads were littered with bodies, which the Germans noted disapprovingly. Organized rape occurred regularly during the deportations. In other instances, Jews were placed in sealed freight cars without food and water for days for the trip to Transnistria. As in other parts of Eastern Europe, the deportation of the Jews was accompanied by a massive program of individual and systematic looting. The National Bank of Romania facilitated this, receiving the currency and valuables stolen from Jews from the areas to be “cleansed.” It also carried out a systematic defrauding of Jews forced to turn in valuable and exchange currency below market value.
Several concentration camps were established in Transnistria to receive incoming Jews, the most notorious being the Bogdanovka camp. When the Germans refused to accept Romanian Jews into their occupied territory, the Romanian government ordered the execution of 30,000. Interestingly, the commander of the gendarmerie at Bogdanovka, Sgt. Maj. Nicolae Melinescu, though a brutal antisemite, refused to obey orders to murder the thousands of prisoners in the camp and was fired.37 At the end of August 1941, the provincial governor of Bessarabia could proclaim, “The Jewish problem has been solved in Bessarabia. Today, in the Bessarabian villages there are no longer any Jews, while in towns, ghettos have been set up for those remaining.”38
Conditions in Transnistria for deportees—both in camps and without—were simply unfit for survival. A representative example of this is the Golta District in northern Transnistria. The prefect in charge of the district, Modest Isopescu, described a “Jewish nightmare” as he was overwhelmed with sick, malnourished, and exhausted Jews while still trying to cope with the corpses of earlier arrivals. His November 1941 report to the governor of Transnistria echoes those from the GG. He notes that 8,000 Jews died in one village from typhus and starvation and laments another “9,000 Yids were sent from Odessa. This means that, counting those who were already there and those who have meanwhile arrived, there are currently 11,000 Yids housed on the state farm in pigsties that could barely accommodate 7,000 pigs.” After noting that the police could not keep pace with the burials required, Isopescu concludes by pleading with his superior, “Implore you to stop ordering Yids to be sent to this region.”39 An analysis of the available documentation indicates that by November 15, 1943, Romanian authorities murdered between 104,522 and 120,810 Romanian Jews in Transnistria via starvation, illness, and execution.40 The region became known as the Kingdom of Death.
However, by 1943, Romanian anti-Jewish policy changed drastically. At a meeting in October 1942, the forced deportation of Jews to Transnistria was stopped. Mihai Antonescu passed on Marshal Antonescu’s “decision to suspend the deportations of Jews to Transnistria.”41 Already in 1942, Antonescu had postponed the deportation of Romanian Jews to the Bełżec extermination center (from pre-war Romania), despite intense German pressure. By 1944, the Romanian government allowed Jews to return from Transnistria and emigrate to Palestine. Despite its unhappiness with this behavior, Germany could not force a change in Romanian behavior, not least because it still relied heavily on Romanian oil.
Why did Romania execute such a reversal in its support of the Holocaust in the East? It should be emphasized that these decisions did not stem from a sudden humanitarian change of heart in the Romanian government. Rather, from a much more pragmatic standpoint, Romanian and German goals had simply diverged. As noted earlier, anti-Jewish policy never held the prime importance for Romania that it did for Germany. Romania had also sacrificed many soldiers and resources for the Nazis in exchange for little of value and little hope of additional territory in the future. In addition, Romania faced pressure from a variety of sources, which probably combined to end its cooperation with Nazi Germany. First, prominent Jewish leaders in Romania marshaled not inconsiderable political opposition to Antonescu’s policies. Dr. Wilhelm Filderman, a former classmate of Antonescu, led the Jewish community and was instrumental in the shift in policy. As the Romanian minister for internal affairs remarked, “The eyes of all the Jews were turned toward Filderman.”42
Filderman rallied support from other political parties and from those close to Antonescu. Chief Rabbi Alexandru Safran assisted him by lobbying contacts in foreign governments. Some Romanian intellectuals also opposed the anti-Jewish policies, penning a 1942 memorandum that asked “How can we condemn the oppression of our brothers, who are living outside Romania’s current borders, when we are about to exterminate a minority population whose right to live has been guaranteed by those same visionaries who sanctified our national borders?”43 This memorandum allegedly also had a strong impact on King Michael and the queen mother. The United States also began to pressure Romania to depart from its current course, demonstrating its interest in the deportations to Transnistria.
Deputy Minister Mihai Antonescu, largely responsible for carrying out Romanian anti-Jewish policy, began to enact a series of concessions, including an end to extermination policy in Transnistria, permission for more aid to deportees, repatriation of expelled Jews, and financial support for Jewish relief efforts in Romania and Transnistria (taken, of course, from money already extorted from Jewish communities).44 Such political change was possible because Romania remained an independent state, free—to a large degree—from German control, and remaining important due to Nazi dependence on its oil. Thus, domestic political forces could still have considerable influence. Nothing illustrated this more clearly than the arrest of Marshal Antonescu in August 1944 by King Michael, when Antonescu had refused to accept a peace offer from the Allies.45 Antonescu’s arrest ended the alliance with Hitler and Romania became an allied country for the remainder of the war. While these measures did save a large number of Jews, Romania under Antonescu murdered around 220,000 Romanian Jews and 180,000 Ukrainian Jews in its occupied territories.46 The Romanian state was, therefore, second only to Nazi Germany in numbers of Jews murdered.
Hungary: The Admiral and the Sinking Ship
I find the evolution of the Jewish question of such far-reaching importance that it may have a decisive impact on German-Hungarian relations, nay . . . I must state in full knowledge of my responsibility that it will in fact become decisive.
Hungarian Ambassador to Germany, DÖME SZTÓJAY, 194047
When the Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944, Admiral Miklós Horthy stoically proclaimed, “I have sworn to the country not to forsake it. I am still an admiral. The captain cannot leave his sinking ship.”48 As captain, Horthy was naturally also responsible in large part for steering his nation’s course. This included determining the degree of participation in German anti-Jewish measures as his ambassador noted above. Hungary’s involvement, like that of Hitler’s other allies, was also complex in its own ways, but it also had similar interests. Even into 1944, the vast majority of its Jews remained untouched and it became a haven for those fleeing the Nazis.
Since the interwar period, the new state of Hungary (created by the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) had been led by Miklós Horthy—an aristocratic admiral without a navy in a landlocked state serving as the regent to an absent king. Horthy, however, had ensured that before taking this position, he had secured all the powers of a monarch. He was described as an “absolutely honest and sincere man . . . of sterling honesty but of no great cleverness.”49 Like many in Eastern Europe, Horthy feared and despised Bolshevism and the Soviet Union. The brief rule by the communist government of Bela Kun exacerbated this anti-Bolshevik sentiment in Hungary, as did the prominence of some Jews in his government. Horthy desired the removal of Jews as a self-proclaimed antisemite, and yet he likely did not support their physical extermination. He was also pragmatic and once noted that in a war between England and Germany, the former “will inevitably win.”50
Like Romania, Hungary also harbored territorial ambitions and grudges it hoped could be remedied through an alliance with Nazi Germany. With the end of World War II, where Hungary had been part of the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire, it lost two-thirds of its territory, a third of its ethnic Hungarian (Magyar) community, and three-fifths of its total population.51 These painful losses kindled right-wing agitation throughout the country. Despite Hitler’s anger over Hungary’s refusal to participate in the Polish campaign and its sheltering of Polish soldiers, he developed a close relationship with Hungary, recognizing its utility in the forthcoming campaign against the Soviet Union. For his part, Horthy sought an opportunity to regain territory and to receive protection from a menacing Soviet Union. A close relationship with Hitler began to remedy Hungary’s territorial losses in 1938, when it received the Carpatho-Ruthenia region of Czechoslovakia. In August 1940, Hungary received the contested region of Northern Transylvania from Romania. Hungary joined the Axis on November 23, 1940. In 1941, it would also receive territory from the defeated Yugoslavia. In return, Hungary supplied troops for the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
At home, Horthy faced a similar situation as the Romanians. While he represented a conservative, aristocratic, anti-Communist, and antisemitic ruling class, more extreme right-wing groups that identified more closely with Nazi ideology consistently challenged him. The most prominent of these was the Arrow Cross party. Headed by Ferenc Szálasi, a retired army officer and diagnosed schizophrenic psychopath, the Arrow Cross clamored for both more radical action against Jews, an ethnic Magyar state, and a social revolution threatening the position of the old guard like Horthy.52 For both the Arrow Cross and many ordinary Hungarians, foreign “unassimilated” Jews, characterized as “Eastern” or “Galician” were not considered Hungarian and needed to be removed from the nation.53 The Arrow Cross was not as dominant as the Iron Guard, but gained enough of a following that Horthy and his government felt that the passage of antisemitic legislation would appease them and decrease their popular support.
An early example of Hungarian antisemitic measures was the 1920 “Numerus Clausus” Act, which limited access to universities for Jews to only 6 percent of total enrollment. As relations with Germany became closer, antisemitic legislation and discrimination increased. A series of three so-called “Jewish Laws” represent this escalation in anti-Jewish discrimination. The First Jewish Law (May 1938) limited the number of Jews in the professions and in financial, commercial, and industrial businesses to 20 percent. The Second Jewish Law (May 1939) reduced the acceptable percentage to 6 percent and also attempted to provide a legal definition for who was a Jew. The Third Jewish Law (August 1941), a replication of the Nazi 1935 Nuremberg Laws, prohibited marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jews.54 While these measures were certainly detrimental to Jewish economic concerns, they still left much of Hungarian Jewish life relatively unaffected. Indeed, Hungary would serve as a destination for Jews fleeing other areas of Eastern Europe for much of the war.
One area in which Hungarian Jews did suffer in a particularly extreme fashion was in the military labor system. Unlike most countries, beginning in 1919, the Hungarian military operated a quasi-military labor service for “unreliable elements” (Communists, other nationalities, and Jews) who could not be trusted to serve “honorably” in the Hungarian Army. Their tasks consisted largely of building roads and fortifications, carrying supplies, and clearing minefields. Initially, this system operated relatively fairly, limiting forced service to three months and offering the same pay, rations, and family benefits as it did to Christian recruits in the army.55 However, over time, the system became radicalized. With a new series of regulations, all Jews of military age were eligible to be conscripted for at least two years. Their identification cards were marked with a “Zs” identifying them as a “Zsidó,” (Jew) and they were forced to wear an armband for the same purpose.56 Jews served in separate companies from Christians and their treatment and living conditions were far more brutal. Members of the Labor Service dug fortifications in freezing conditions, pulled wagons, received grossly inadequate clothing, and cleared minefields by marching through them or with their bare hands. One Labor Service base commander “allegedly instructed his company commanders to make sure the labor servicemen did not come back home alive, since they were the enemies of the state.”57 This particularly Hungarian form of annihilation through military labor was terribly effective. Of the 50,000 Jews conscripted between 1942 and 1944, approximately 42,000 died or were murdered.58
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Jews in the Labor Service were not the only ones at great risk in Hungary. With the start of the war against the Soviet Union, antisemitic authorities in the Hungarian National Central Alien Control Office (KEOKH) prepared a plan to deport “foreign” Jews from the territories recently added to Hungary, in particular, from the Carpatho-Ruthenia region in what is now western Ukraine. The KEOKH sought to “expel from Carpatho-Ruthenia all persons of dubious citizenship and to hand them over to the German authorities in Eastern Galicia.”59 These “dubious” citizens consisted of Jews from Poland, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, and quite a few Hungarian Jews unable to prove their citizenship in the short time allowed. As in Romania, this deportation action was justified in terms of creating an ethnically homogenous Magyar state. These Jews were rounded up and deported via freight car to the border with the Nazi General Government, newly enlarged to include Galicia. By the end of August 1941, approximately 18,000 had been forced across the border to Kamenets-Podolsk. German authorities were surprised and overwhelmed by the numbers and requested an end to the deportations. The Hungarians agreed to stop the deportations but refused to accept any Jews back into the country.
The Higher SS and Police Leader for the area, Friedrich Jeckeln, then agreed to carry out the murder of these Jews by September 1. True to his word, mass executions took place from August 27 to 28. Jeckeln’s personal SS staff company and Police Battlion 320 murdered the around 18,000 deported Hungarian Jews at a former munitions depot near Kamenets-Podolsk. A local inhabitant recalled “a group of 8,000 defenseless Hungarians [Jews], who came to us in Kamenets-Podolsk from Hungary. They walked in rows of four and had their children with them or carried them in their arms.”60 A former German policeman recalled that at the end of the execution, Jeckeln himself “pointed specifically to one Jew, who was wearing a grey suit and who made an especially respectable impression. In very dramatic way he called this Jew by name and declared essentially: ‘Look at this man. He is a typical Jew who must be exterminated so that we Germans can live.’”61 A local Jew remembered that “Several days afterward, both day and night frightful noises were heard from the graves.”62 However, when the Hungarian Minister of the Interior, Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer, learned of the massacre, he immediately ordered an end to the deportations. The Hungarian Army carried out a mass killing in Délvidék (Yugoskavia) that targeted both Jews and Serbs and also was widely condemned in government circles. Such conflicting policies within the Hungarian government characterized internal differences in attitudes toward the Holocaust not present in Germany.
As in Romania, the fortunes of war and increasing Nazi pressure for more cooperation in anti-Jewish policy began to strain relations between Hungary and Germany. On the Eastern front in January 1943, the 2nd Hungarian Army lost 50 percent of its men in the Soviet Union and was practically destroyed.63 After the loss of Stalingrad, it became increasingly clear that Germany would lose the war. In addition, Hitler’s closest ally, Mussolini, was deposed later that year and Italy joined the allies. Admiral Horthy and his Prime Minister, Miklós Kállay, began looking for ways to distance themselves from the Nazis. First and foremost, they wanted to avoid Soviet occupation.
As Hitler became more and more concerned with the lack of Hungarian enthusiasm for both the war and the Final Solution, he summoned Horthy to the Klessheim Palace in Salzburg, Austria on April 16, 1943. The Führer reiterated the importance of the Jewish question but Horthy stated, “I had done everything I could against the Jews within the limits of decency, but I can hardly murder them or do away with them in some other way.”64 While Nazi Germany attempted to apply pressure on the Horthy government by increased support for the Arrow Cross, Kállay repeatedly declined German requests for the deportation of Hungarian Jews, citing their necessity in industry and therefore their importance to the German war effort as well.65 He made this clear in a speech he gave in June 1943. While agreeing that Hungary had to solve its Jewish “problem,” Kállay declined to “keep this problem on the agenda so long as the basic prerequisite of the solution, namely the answer to the question where the Jews are to be resettled is not given. Hungary will never deviate from those precepts of humanity which, in the course of history, it has always maintained in racial and religious questions.” As the great Holocaust historian, Raul Hilberg, summarizd: “In the shrouded terminology of the Axis world, a man could not have said ‘no’ more clearly than Kállay had done in this speech.”66 In addition, Prime Minister Kállay began to seek a possible negotiated surrender to the Allies. In March 1944, Horthy was again summoned to the Klessheim Palace where Hitler informed him that the Germans would be occupying Hungary. Horthy agreed to the transfer of 300,000 Jewish “workers” to Germany.
German troops occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. The relatively moderate Prime Minister Kállay resigned and was replaced by the pro-German Döme Sztójay, the former ambassador to Germany. Horthy’s decision not to resign as Kállay did had several decisive repercussions for Hungarian Jews. First, he “contributed to the placement of the entire Hungarian state apparatus at the service of the Germans.” Second, he calmed the population and “assured the maintenance of law and order that the Germans desired.” Third, he became complicit in the crimes of the extremist Arrow Cross, which he had hoped to prevent by remaining part of the government. Lastly, while remaining part of the government, he effectively withdrew from the day-to-day decision-making, abandoning Hungarian Jews to German policies by his inaction.67 As one historian described it, “Horthy abstained from any kind of political activity of practical importance for three months.”68 Nor did he appear to be opposed to German measures. Indeed, a Nazi official testified at his trial that:
Horthy himself told me that he was interested only in protecting those who were prosperous, the economically valuable Jews in Budapest, those who were well off. However, as to the remaining Jewry—and he used a very ugly term there—he had no interest in them and was quite prepared to have them go to the Reich or elsewhere for labor.69
While Horthy did not explicitly consent to their murder, he certainly was aware by this point of the exterminationist form that the Final Solution had taken, and this statement has been corroborated by a variety of sources.70
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In addition, more right wing extremists took up important positions in the cabinet. The new Sztójay government was, therefore, receptive to the arrival of two key Nazi functionaries, Edmund Veesenmayer and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who were to assure Hungary’s continued cooperation with Germany. Vessenmayer in particular was tasked with the overall deportation of Hungarian Jews. In addition, the Nazis sent in a special SS detail, led by their deportation specialist, SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann. He and his team immediately got to work in the spring and summer of 1944 on the task of deporting Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Eichmann and his staff divided Hungary into zones and began deporting Jews by zone by the end of April. From May 14, roughly four trains left the country each day, packed with 3,000 people each. The victims were mainly Jews from the provincial zones. By the beginning of July 1944, 437,000 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz, with most of them being murdered upon arrival.71
At this point, Horthy reemerged on the scene demanding an end to the deportations. It appears that a combination of outside pressures brought about this policy rather than a change of heart. At the end of June, Horthy had received requests from Pope Pius XII and the King of Sweden to end the deportations. The United States under President Roosevelt had been more insistent, demanding an end to the deportations and a “cessation of all anti-Jewish measures” and then underscoring these demands with “an unusually heavy air raid on Budapest” on July 2.72 In what was perhaps some calculated theatrics, Horthy told his Council of Ministers that “I shall not tolerate this any further! I shall not permit the deportations to bring further shame on the Hungarians! . . . The deportations of the Jews of Budapest must cease! The Government must take the necessary steps!”73 Even after Horthy’s decree, Eichmann sought with mixed success to circumvent it by deporting more Jews. At this point, the Budapest zone was the only one untouched by Eichmann’s handiwork.
Once again, Himmler and the SS found their plans for Hungarian Jews stymied. The situation came to a head with Horthy’s official overtures to the Soviets and intent to surrender Hungary, knowing that the Allies could not support him. On October 15, 1944, before Horthy could broadcast Hungary’s surrender, his son was arrested by the Nazis and used to force Horthy’s abdication. He was replaced by Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi the next day. The Nazis were less than enthusiastic about their new ally. Hitler was unimpressed and famed general Heinz Guderian aptly described him having “little ability and less tact.” In describing the meeting with Hitler, he recalled, “The conversation was awkward. The new man did not give the impression of one from whom much might be expected. He seemed to have risen in the world almost against his will. We had no allies anymore.”74
The new truly puppet government under Szálasi authorized the restarting of deportations, which, while still deadly, were less catastrophic due to logistical difficulties and the dismantling of the gas chambers in Auschwitz.75 The Jews in the Budapest ghetto still suffered mass killings at the hands of the Arrow Cross but, 163 days after Szálasi took power, the Red Army conquered Budapest, liberating over 100,000 Jews.
Bulgaria: The Reluctant Accomplice
for the deportation of the first 20,000 Jews from the new Bulgarian
lands Thrace and Macedonia into the German eastern regions
attained between
Bulgarian Commissar for Jewish Questions, Mr. Aleksandur Belev, on
one side, and German plenipotentiary, Captain of the Defense Detachment [SS-Hauptsturmführer] Theodor Dannecker, on the other side.
1. After confirmation by the Council of Ministers, in the new Bulgarian
lands Thrace and Macedonia will be prepared 20,000 Jews without
regard to age and sex-for deportation.
The German Reich is ready to accept these Jews in their eastern regions.
DANNECKER-BELEV AGREEMENT, February 22, 194376
If Romania was quite willing to murder its Jews within its own borders and Hungary content to allow the Nazis to do the killing, Bulgaria was a most reluctant partner in the Holocaust. While allied with Nazi Germany, Bulgaria was the only Axis nation that did not send troops to aid in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Even volunteers were not permitted to participate. In fact, Bulgaria never even declared war on the Soviet Union.77 It also managed to refuse implementation of the Final Solution more successfully than either Romania or Hungary. As a result, some have attempted to compare Bulgaria favorably to Denmark, which through extraordinary efforts rescued most of its Jewish population. One Bulgarian historian went so far as to claim that his country could recall its “history with pride, thanks to the collective protection they provided the Jews under the control.” He refers to this as a “miraculous occurrence of goodness.”78 This “miracle” would be cold comfort to the over 11,000 Macedonian and Thracian Jews the Bulgarians deported in the Dannecker-Belev Agreement above, the majority of whom died in the gas chambers of Treblinka and Auschwitz. The situation in Bulgaria was more complex and this characterization may well represent wishful thinking more than reality. On the other hand, Bulgaria stands out both in its position in the Nazi solar system and its refusal to carry out most Nazi directives regarding the Final Solution.
The reluctance of Bulgaria to become a more active partner in Nazi genocidal policy stems in part from the less virulent and widespread antisemitism in the country. Leading historian on Bulgaria, Frederick Chary, has concluded that “On the whole, Bulgaria had less antisemitism than other countries of the Western World.”79 The Nazis themselves recognized this, as the German representative for Jewish Affairs in Bulgaria reported to Berlin that: “Having lived all their lives with Armenians, Greeks and gypsies, the Bulgarians see no harm in the Jew to justify special measures against him.”80 Bulgaria was home to 63,400 Jews, most of whom were Sephardic, having fled Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries.81 The relatively small number of Jews (1 % of a more ethnically diverse population) likely contributed to the decreased strength and frequency of antisemitism in Bulgaria.82 In addition, Jewish life in Bulgaria was “peculiar,” as Jews were not nearly as visible in professional life or connected to a ruling nobility.83 In addition, while there was an antisemitic, right wing, fascist organization, the Ratsnitsi, its numbers were relatively small and its focus lay on recovering territory. Unlike the Iron Guard or the Arrow Cross, it played little role in government at any point.
If Bulgaria was somewhat unlike Romania and Hungary in its attitude toward the Jews, it was similar to its neighbors in its politics. A dictatorial king, Boris III, governed Bulgaria as of 1935. His was a conservative regime, but not completely authoritarian; via a weak parliament, the people could provide some input to their government. Boris III’s most pressing concerns were primarily territorial as well. Bulgaria sought the return of the Dobruja region in eastern Romania as well as Thrace and Macedonia. All of these territories had been reconquered during World War I and then lost due to Bulgaria’s participation on the side of Germany. Many Bulgarians viewed these as traditional Bulgarian territories and demanded that they once again become part of the mother country. In these designs, Bulgaria resembled Romania and Hungary. Apart from Dobruja which brought it in conflict with Romania, however, most of Bulgarias’s territorial claims were directed west against Greece and the newly formed nation of Yugoslavia.
King Boris III viewed an alliance with Nazi Germany as a relatively inexpensive way to retrieve these territories. The two nations were already economically close after all. Bulgaria began to enter Germany’s sphere of influence in the 1930s via closer and closer economic ties. Nazi Germany became Bulgaria’s chief trading partner, accounting for 65.5 percent of its imports and 67.8 percent of its exports by 1939. Perhaps more importantly, Bulgaria received much of its military equipment from Germany, strengthening its Nazi ties almost automatically in case of war.84 After a series of negotiations and through pressure exerted by Germany, Bulgaria rejoiced over the return of Dobruja as a result of the Vienna Award of September 7, 1940.85 In addition, most Bulgarians viewed the Soviet Union as a natural enemy. As the Bulgarian Prime Minister Bogdan Filov noted in his diary, “We cannot gain anything from an English victory, for a failure of German arms inevitably means we shall be ‘Bolshevized.’”86 Still, Boris III remained reticent to fully commit to Hitler, only signing the Tripartite Pact in March 1941, four months after Romania and Hungary. Bulgaria’s delay in declaring war on England until December 1941 further illustrates the King’s reluctance. However, after the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941, Bulgaria received the territories of Thrace and Macedonia. It now stood firmly in the Nazi camp, but limited its participation in the Nazi war effort to the passage of troops and supplying its allies. No Bulgarian troops entered the Soviet Union.
A shift to the right in the Bulgarian government in 1940 accompanied its closer connections to Germany. Indeed, both public and official antisemitism increased beginning in 1939. A new government was formed, headed by Prime Minister Bogdan Filov. Filov was an art historian and had previously served as the Minister of Education. He was also German-educated and retained close ties with the country.87 Filov was not an extremist, but he certainly identified with some elements of the right and with Nazi goals. For example, he promoted Petar Gabrovski to the position of Minister of the Interior even though Gabrovski had been a member of the Ratnitsi and was a rabid antisemite. Filov also oversaw the passing of the first antisemitic law in Bulgaria: the Law for the Protection of the Nation (abbreviated ZZN in Bulgarian). This law, which took effect on January 23, 1941, was explicitly modeled on the Nuremburg Laws and other Nazi official discrimination against Jews. The ZZN prohibited marriage between Jews and non-Jews, but took a “fundamentally religious approach in defining Jews, excluding converts to Christianity and those [already] married to ethnic Bulgarians.”88 This legislation and others persecuted Jews and expelled them from Bulgarian society. A numera clausus or quota was established in many professions, limiting Jewish membership. Jewish businesses and employment were curtailed and property confiscated. Jewish men between 20 and 40 were condemned to forced labor, where they did construction work.89 Gabrovski, created a Commissariat for Jewish Questions and appointed his friend, Alexander Belev, as Commissioner. Belev was a die-hard Ratnitsi member and antisemite. In fact, he had traveled to Nazi Germany to research its anti-Jewish laws in preparation for similar measures in Bulgaria.
Official acts of discrimination were certainly devastating to the Bulgarian Jewish community, but they were “unenthusiastically” supported by King Boris III.90 Communications from top Nazi officials themselves proves their irritation with this lack of enthusiasm. A high-level SS counterintelligence officer in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) complained in 1942 that Boris “himself has intervened through various people of his intimate circle directly in various cases in favor of the Jews.” He also lamented the relatively sporadic wearing of the yellow star and believed that the Jews “are now actually proud of their badges.”91
The same cannot be said of Bulgarian treatment of Jews in their newly occupied territories of Thrace, and Macedonia. In these places, Jews were not seen as Bulgarian citizens at all and enjoyed no protection from the government. Indeed, like Romania and Hungary, Bulgarian policy sought to “purify” these lands in order to better absorb them into the “Old Kingdom.” Still, drastic actions against the Jews in these regions did not begin immediately. The Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, Alexander Belev, reported to Grabovski from Berlin in June 1942 that “The radical solution of the Jewish problem in our country would be the deportation of the Jews and simultaneous confiscation of their property.” Though uncertain of the final disposition of the Jews, he emphasized that, “In the meantime until conditions for deportation of the Jews are created it is imperative that the measures concerning the Jews be strengthened . . . ”92 These measures extended to the newly occupied territories and seriously impacted Jewish life there. Jews here could not become Bulgarian citizens (as other ethnicities could if they wished). As one survivor from the small town of Monastir in Macedonia wrote, “Thus life was so greatly changed and there were no more get-togethers, no festivals, no weddings, no celebrations.”93
The task of the disposition of Bulgaria’s Jews fell to SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker who arrived in the capital, Sofia, in January 1943. Dannecker, one of Adolf Eichmann’s deportation experts, had previously organized the rounding up and deportation of 13,000 French Jews to Auschwitz and hoped to do the same in Bulgaria. To that end, he met with Commissioner Belev on February 22, 1943, and arranged for the deportation of 20,000 Jews: 12,000 from the newly occupied territories of Thrace and Macedonia and a further 8,000 from the “Old Kingdom” of Bulgaria itself.
On March 4, Bulgarian police and other authorities began rounding up the approximately 4,000 Jews of Thrace, who were then confined to warehouses until the round up was completed two weeks later. They were then taken by train and ship to Vienna. From Vienna, the Nazis deported by them to the Treblinka extermination center on March 26 and 28, gassing them on arrival. The Bulgarian military and police were quite enthusiastic in their actions against Jews in the occupied territories. In the town of Pirot, taken from eastern Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Sarah Alkalaj recalled that the Bulgarians conducted house-to-house searches. She was 22 when she and her family “were taken to the Gymnasium. We were locked there for more than a week. No one could come or leave. There they took our valuable things, money, jewelry, etc. Then we were transferred to another building.”94 They narrowly escaped death by sneaking away from the train during a halt.
In Macedonia, approximately 8,000 Jews were not as fortunate. They were rounded up on March 11. Survivor Albert Sarfati recalled the deportation: “They loaded us into cattle wagons, fifty to sixty people per wagon, including luggage. There wasn’t enough space and many had to stand. There was no water. The children were crying . . . A woman in one wagon was giving birth . . . but there was no doctor.”95 The Macedonian Jews were then confined in four warehouses belonging to the Monopol tobacco company in Skopje. Bulgarian authorities deprived their prisoners of sufficient food and water while robbing and abusing them. They also sexually assaulted the women and girls. A survivor described the mood in the Monopol warehouses, saying, “We were in a terrible mood. The youngsters tried to sing every so often, but the adults and the elderly people were in deep depression. We did not know what awaited us, but the dreadful treatment we received from the Bulgarians showed the value of the promises given us that we would only be taken to a Bulgarian work camp.”96 The Jews of Macedonia were deported eleven days later in three trains. Albert Sarfati, who escaped deportation, watched the second train boarding and later described the scene: “Each wagon carried between 60 and 70 people with all their baggage. The people came out of the building carrying their belongings on their backs. Everyone was carrying things, from the oldest person to the youngest. With bowed heads, all approached the black train. In front of each wagon stood a German and a Bulgarian policeman checking off a list. It was impossible to sit down in the freight cars . . . Hands were waving goodbye from the small wagon windows and all of us in the building were shedding tears.”97 All three trains traveled to Treblinka where almost all the Jews of Macedonia were gassed upon arrival. The dead included more than 2,000 children under the age of 16.98
As the experience of the Thracian and Macedonian Jews demonstrates, Bulgarian authorities could be just as brutal and murderous as their Nazi allies. However, when Dannecker and Belev turned to preparations for the deportation of Jews from the “Old Kingdom” of pre-war Bulgaria, they encountered a surprising amount of resistance. News of the pending deportations leaked to prominent members of the Bulgarian community. Leaders in the Jewish community could and did still lobby the government against the planned actions. On their behalf, the Vice President of the Bulgarian Parliament, Dmitar Peshev, led a political campaign against the deportations. Even though he had supported the alliance with Hitler, Peshev could not tolerate the extermination of Bulgarian Jews. He mobilized 42 other members of parliament to sign his letter of protest addressed to Prime Minister Filov. In the letter, which he submitted to Parliament on March 17, 1943, Peshev wrote “It is impossible for us to accept that plans have been made to deport these people.” He also made the utilitarian argument that participating in Nazi genocidal policy could have dire repercussions for Bulgaria when the war was over. Peshev closed his letter by saying “Good government requires basic legal principles, just as life requires air to breathe. The honor of Bulgaria is not just a matter of sentiment, it is also and above all a matter of policy.”99 Peshev’s actions caused a great deal of debate both political and public, eventually leading to a parliamentary confrontation, which he lost along with his position. The Bulgarian Church and its leadership joined Peshev in opposition to the deportations. Its three highest leaders visited the King and Prime Minister Filov on April 15, 1943 to deliver their protests in person. Though more concerned with Jews who had converted to Christianity, they still lobbied on behalf of all Bulgarian Jews.100 In addition, Americans and British issued a joint protest. The outrage generated by the deportations caused King Boris III to hesitate and eventually to oppose any deportations of Bulgarian Jews. In April, he told the Nazi Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop, of his “hope that deportations would remain limited to Jews in Macedonia and Thrace.”101 The Nazis were naturally displeased and increased pressure on Bulgaria to hand over its Jews. This resulted in the expulsion of Jews from the capital, Sofia, a move which both Dannecker and Belev hoped would lead to future deportation. While this measure was successful in forcing Jews into the countryside in May, it also generated protests and outrage as well. Two prominent politicians, for example, wrote a letter to the King in which they condemned the “cruel measures against our fellow citizens of Jewish origin.”102 In the end, no Bulgarian Jews were deported to the extermination centers. King Boris III has often been seen as a hero as a result, but his legacy is more complex. He supported both antisemitic legislation against Bulgarian Jews and knowingly agreed to the murder of Jews in the new territories under Bulgarian control. One historian has aptly summarized his role in rescuing Bulgarian Jews by noting that, previously, he had allowed events to take place, but in March 1943 “when he had to take a decision, he changed his policy.” This, then, set a precedent from which he could not retreat.103 Dmitâr Peshev was honored in 1973 by the Israeli Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, with its highest award for rescuers during the Holocaust: Righteous Among the Nations.104
The role played by Hitler’s eastern allies exposes the complexity of the involvement of local governments and institutions in the Holocaust. The behavior and choices of Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria demonstrate a wide range of complicity in genocide, but they have several characteristics in common. First, Hitler’s allies were usually more concerned with resolving territorial claims than with participation in a racial war against the Jews. Second, they were far more willing to participate in the Holocaust when it supported their goal of “purifying” or “cleansing” newly acquired territories. Finally, each country retained the ability to negotiate its participation in the Nazi genocidal project and, often, to refuse. Only Hungary was truly occupied and forced to comply. Collectively, the histories of these countries illustrate the ways in which they used the Holocaust for their own purposes, and also the degree to which they could control their participation.
Selected Readings
Ancel, Jean. The History of the Holocaust in Romania. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
Ancel, Jean. Prelude to Mass Murder: the Pogrom in Iași, Romania, June 29, 1941 and Thereafter. Translated by Fern Seckbach. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2013.
Braham, Randolph L. The Politics of Genocide the Holocaust in Hungary (Condensed Edition). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000.
Chary, Frederick B. The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940–1944. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972.
Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.