Rabbi Daniel Zion רבי דניאל ציון
chief rabbi of Sofia in the days when the fate of Bulgarian Jewry was decided
Bulgaria fought on Germany's side, and at the start of 1943 its authorities agreed to hand over the Jews. The lists were drawn up, the wagons assigned. The chief rabbi of Sofia, Rabbi Daniel Zion, went to Metropolitan Stefan, to the deputies and to King Boris—and he was not alone: deputies led by Dimitar Peshev rose, the church rose, ordinary people rose.
The deportation was stopped. Fifty thousand Jews of Bulgaria remained alive—a case with almost no equal in the Europe of those years.
And here the second half must be said, without which the first would be untrue. From the lands Bulgaria occupied—Thrace and Macedonia—where the Bulgarian authorities governed but granted no citizenship, more than eleven thousand people were deported and murdered. The saving of one's own and the handing over of others happened in the same year and by the decision of the same men.
After the war Rabbi Daniel Zion went up to the Land of Israel and lived in Jaffa; the Bulgarian community moved almost entire.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The documents of the Bulgarian government and church of 1943 — the cancelled deportation and the removal from the occupied lands
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years 1883-1979 and the chief rabbinate of Sofia
Basis: documents and evidence.