Fascist Bulgaria's occupation of Macedonia during World War II

[Soldier of Macedon]

Here is an interesting report from a Croatian military official during World War II. It was submitted around 6 months after Bulgaria occupied the part of Macedonia that was previously occupied by Serbia and concerns the sentiment of the local population and a particular incident that occurred in Skopje. Note that the report is based on observations and a discussion between two individuals, who, although aligned with the Axis forces, do not appear to have a vested interest in taking a pro-Macedonian or pro-Bulgar perspective on the matter in question, thus lending the report a certain objectivity that would otherwise be generally lacking from the forces that occupied Macedonia during this period. The report is cited in Documents on the Struggle of the Macedonian People for Independence and for a National State. Volume Two. pp. 308-309, where a Macedonian translation (see further down) from the Croatian original is provided. The English translation below is basic, if there are any errors with it, feel free to recommend adjustments.

Sofia, 21 October 1941

To the Ministry of the Croatian Home Guard - Main HQ

A few days ago, my friend from Skopje, certified electrician-installer and authorized head of the high-voltage power plant, Albert Shritoff, was staying in Sofia. During that time, I asked him about the situation in Skopje and Bulgarian Macedonia, and in a casual conversation he told me this:

"The internal position in the part of Macedonia that was possessed by Bulgaria is quite unclear. The expressive Macedonians show a certain dissatisfaction with the new regime in Bulgaria. Likewise, from the Bulgarians who are residents of Macedonia, a good 30% are not delighted with the Bulgarian administration because they do not have all those rights that Bulgarians have in Bulgaria. There is a particular disillusionment among the young intelligentsia who studied in Belgrade and worked for the state in the old Yugoslavia. There is no trust in them and those people are unemployed. And there are those who were initially accepted in the civil service of Bulgaria, but so far, a large number of them have been dismissed and thus remain without a job. The Arnauts are also very dissatisfied with the new ruler and mourn for Yugoslavia. But the Arnauts who are under Italian occupation are satisfied, because the Italians placed authority in their hands.

The Turks (Muslims) behave as they did in the time of Yugoslavia, but they stand out quite a bit with their Anglophilism. The Serbian and Jewish merchants must sell off and liquidate their shops within 3 months, and then the Serbs from Bulgarian Macedonia will most probably be evicted. The Macedonians show an extraordinarily cordial attitude towards us, the Croats.

Relations between the Bulgarians and Germans are good. Some time ago, an incident of a political nature took place at a night-time bar in Skopje, during which some German officers and non-commissioned officers intervened. At that bar, the musicians played the Macedonian anthem, to which a Bulgarian non-commissioned officer clapped. At the same time, a Bulgarian officer approached that non-commissioned officer and asked him why he was clapping, to which he replied: "What is Macedonian is also Bulgarian". At these words, the Bulgarian officer slapped the non-commissioned officer. Some German non-commissioned officers, who were also there, noticed this and asked the Bulgarian officer why he hit the non-commissioned officer, but the latter, without providing an answer, immediately left the place, but these German non-commissioned officers caught up with him and beat him up. This incident caused a certain dissatisfaction among all those who were present, but they are delighted with Macedonia".

Judging by everything, it seems that in Bulgarian Macedonia there is a strong current for liberation and the creation of an independent Macedonia. I submit this report with a request that it be reviewed.

For HOMELAND ready!

Lieutenant Colonel Adam Petrovic, Military Envoy in Sofia

---------------------

Collection of documents and data on the National Liberation War of the Yugoslav peoples (hereinafter: Z NOR.). Volume VII, vol. 1. (doc. no. 125) Belgrade 1952, p. 430-431.

Софија, 21 октомври 1941

До Министерството на хрватското домобранство - главен стожер (Одделение за очевидност)

Пред некој ден во Софија престојуваше мојот пријател од Скопје, овластен електромонтер-инсталатер и овластен раководител на електричната централа со висок напон Алберт Шритоф. Тогаш го прашував за положбата во Скопје и Бугарска Македонија, и тој во неврзан разговор помеѓу останатото ми го рече и ова:

"Внатрешната положба во делот од Македонија што и припадна на Бугарија доста е нејасна. Изразените Македонци покажуваат извесно незадоволство кон новиот режим во Бугарија. Исто така и од Бугарите-жители на Македонија добри 30% не се воодушевyваат од бугарската управа бидејќи ги немаат сите оние права што ги имаат Бугарите во Бугарија. Особено разочарување владее меѓу младата интелигенција којашто студираше во Белград и беше на државна работа во стара Југославија. Кон нив се нема доверба и тие луѓе се без работа. А има и такви кои во прво време беа примени во државната служба на Бугарија, но досега има поголем број отпуштени и така останаа без работа. Арнаутите се исто така мошне незадоволни со новиот господар и тагуваат по Југославија. А пак Арнаутите што се наоѓаат под италијанска окупација се задоволни, бидејќи Италијанците им дадоа власт во рацете.

Турците (муслимани) се држат како во времето на Југославија, но доста се истакнyваат со своето англофилство. Трговците Срби и Евреи мораат во рок од 3 месеца да ги распродадат и да ги ликвидираат своите дуќани, а потоа веројатно ќе се оди кон тоа Србите од Бугарска Македонија да бидат иселени. Кон нас, Хрватите, покажуваат Македонците извонредно срдечно држање.

Односите неѓу Бугарите и Германците се добри. Пред извесно време се случи еден инцидент од политички карактер во една ноќна кафеана во Скопје, при што некои германски офицери и подофицери интервенирале. Во истиот локал музиката ја отсвирила Македонската химна, на што еден бугарски подофицер и ракоплескал. Во исто време на тој подофицер мy пристапува еден бугарски офицер и го прашува зошто ракоплеска, на што овој мy одговорил: "Тоа што е македонско е и бугарско". На овие зборови, бугарскиот офицер му удрил на подофицерот една шлаканица. Тоа го забележале некои германски подофицери, кои исто така биле тука, и го прашале бугарскиот офицер зошто го удрил подофицерот, но овој, не одговорајќи ништо веднаш го напуштил локалот, но го стигнале овие германски подофицери и убаво го изнатепале. Овој инцидент предизвикал извесно незадоволство кај сите оние што биле присутни, а се воодушевуваат од Македонија".

Судејќи по сѐ, изгледа дека во Бугарска Македонија постои силна струја за ослободување и создавање самостојна Македонија. Предниот извештај го доставyвам со молба да се разгледа.

За ДОМ спремни!

Потполковник Адам Петровиќ, воен пратеник во Софија

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Zbornika dokumenata i podataka o Narodnooslobodilačkom ratu jugoslovenskih naroda (натамy: Z NOR.). Tom VII, knj. 1. (dok. br. 125) Beograd 1952, str. 430-431.

[Soldier of Macedon]

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/north-macedonias-first-jewish-lawmaker-broke-taboos-hit-by-antisemitism-669754

Politics was supposed to be a very brief interlude in Rashela Mizrahi’s career as a scientist. A 39-year-old Jewish fertility researcher from North Macedonia, she was appointed last year to serve for 100 days as the temporary minister of labor in her Balkan country, situated north of Greece. She was deemed a good nonpartisan pick to serve as a placeholder ahead of elections. “I had zero interest in politics,” Mizrahi told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But I thought it’d send a good message for women. Plus, like any Jewish daughter, I wanted to make my parents proud.” But what began as a token stint resulted in multiple diplomatic spats and the country’s worst-ever wave of public antisemitic rhetoric. Along the way, Mizrahi became an unlikely hero for many of her country’s conservatives and a fighter for preserving the memory of a Jewish community that the Nazis and their allies almost rendered extinct. It all started in February, she said, during a routine press conference that she gave at the labor ministry in the capital Skopje weeks after she became its temporary boss.

“I talked unemployment, stimulus plans, welfare. The usual stuff,” she recalled. But in media reports, Mizrahi’s message was upstaged by the backdrop: A large wooden sign that read “the Republic of Macedonia.” This was an issue, because the previous year Macedonia had changed its name to North Macedonia due to pressure from its richer and larger neighbor, Greece. That country has long argued that its northern neighbor’s former name implied territorial claims to Greek’s northern province, which is also called Macedonia. The sign landed Mizrahi at the center of a polarizing debate between Macedonian hawks who see the 2020 name change as surrender to a foreign power, and doves who defended the change as a pragmatic gesture that opened the door for Macedonia to join NATO and in the future also the European Union. Mizrahi was not a member of any political party back then and said that she had no intention of making a political point at the press conference. She didn’t even make the sign, which Mizrahi says was “just part of the furniture.” “The sign was just there. I didn’t have it put up there,” she said.

But as a business and science-oriented straight talker with little interest in diplomatic niceties, Mizrahi did not hide her disdain for the controversial name change. “You can thank my predecessor, who didn’t commission any new signs. Maybe she recognizes that this is the Republic of Macedonia and that we’re Macedonians,” Mizrahi said to reporters about Mila Carovska, a member of the left-leaning SDSM party that led the name change. Greece’s ambassador protested the remark and then Nikola Dimitrov, North Macedonia’s foreign at the time, warned that Mizrahi was putting “Euro-Atlantic aspirations in danger.” She was fired just five weeks into her three-month stint. But what might have ended as the axing of a novice politician snowballed into the country’s first-ever wave of antisemitic rhetoric — with Mizrahi as its target. Branko Trickovski, a well-known journalist and a supporter of the left-wing SDSM party, ridiculed Mizrahi on Facebook, describing her as a zealot for Macedonian and Jewish nationalism, who gets her strength from “eating hummus made of dead Jews.”

Mersiha Smailovic, a former official from the ministry that Mizrahi had headed, on Facebook wrote that Mizrahi was planning to place an Israeli flag at her office. Another SDSM activist called her a “Jew who worked for the Nazi occupation in World War Two.” It triggered “a stream of hundreds of antisemitic messages. Death threats. Even against my daughter,” Mizrahi said of her two-year-old, her younger child she had with her husband, a 43-year-old welder who comes from a Christian Eastern Orthodox family. “I’m still afraid. Not so much for me but for my daughter. I never thought this could happen in this country, where antisemitism never used to be a part of life,” Mizrahi said. “It has changed how I see my country.” It has also caused her to change her career plans. “I decided I can’t walk away, I needed to stay and fight,” she said. Parking her career as a consultant and researcher for an international pharmaceutical company, Mizrahi joined the VMRO right-wing opposition party and became a lawmaker in parliament. She’s North Macedonia’s first-ever Jewish parliament lawmaker since it broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991. According to a report titled “Antisemitic Discourse in the Western Balkans” published this year by the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit whose mission statement is promoting democracy, the Mizrahi affair showed that “antisemitic narratives exist [in North Macedonia] and are utilized for political gain. Antisemitism is used to sow divisions within the country, which subsequently increases its vulnerability to manipulation.”

The rhetoric on Mizrahi also shocked other members of the Jewish community, a tiny minority of about 200 people, which hasn’t grown since the Holocaust, when the Nazis and collaborators murdered about 98% of Macedonian Jewry. “We had lived here without antisemitic statements before,” said Maja Susha, an educator and Holocaust researcher who is a member of North Macedonia’s Jewish community. “But after what happened with Rashela we saw the real reality.” The antisemitism has since subsided and life is safe for Jews, said Susha, who like almost all of North Macedonia’s Jews lives in Skopje. It’s a placid capital where about a quarter of North Macedonia’s 2 million citizens live, mostly in crumbling Soviet-era buildings that are juxtaposed with a staggering wealth of statues and classical style monuments. The anti-Semitism came as less of a surprise to Mizrahi’s father, Viktor, who for many years had led the Jewish community. The Holocaust shaped much of the way that Rashela Mizrahi and her brother Rahamim were raised by their parents Viktor and Liljana, a convert to Judaism who observes the religion more devoutly than her husband. “I was encouraged to be a doctor. Rahamim to become a lawyer. Why? Because these are professions so vital that the recipients of your services don’t care if you’re Jewish,” Rashela Mizrahi said. Her parents “were terrified when I stepped into politics,” Mizrahi said. “But they were also very proud.”

In parliament, Mizrahi focuses on initiatives that will help young people gain an education in North Macedonia – which she still refuses to call by its new name – and on projects to mitigate the country’s brain drain problem. But it’s Mizrahi’s foreign policy actions that grab headlines in the Balkans. In addition to vocally opposing concessions to Greece, Mizrahi is a prominent critic of what she considers the left-wing government’s appeasement of neighboring Bulgaria — another powerful neighbor whose actions have had a devastating effect on Mizrahi’s own family. On Dec. 30, Mizrahi delivered a speech in parliament about Bulgaria’s role in the Holocaust, when Bulgarian forces occupied what is today North Macedonia and helped round up 98% of the area’s 7,000-plus Jews and deport them to be murdered by German troops. Standing against the giant Christmas tree that decorates parliament in Skopje during the holiday season, Mizrahi held up pictures of her dead relatives and asked Prime Minister Zoran Zaev: “Who killed them?” The video, that went viral on local social networks, was a protest over Zaev’s decision last year to remove from government property any memorial plaques for World War II victims that called their killers as belonging to the “Bulgarian fascist occupation,” because “Bulgaria was not a fascist occupier of Macedonia but an administrator,” as he put it. “My family was not murdered by an administrator’s pen, Mr. Zaev,” Mizrahi said in parliament.

Her protest echoed the position of the Jewish Community of the Republic of North Macedonia, a nonprofit that represents Macedonian Jewry’s interests. Last year, it accused Bulgaria of “deliberately whitewashing its dark history and thus distorting the truth about the Holocaust.” But Mizrhai’s speech was the first time that this accusation was discussed in such a way in North Macedonia’s parliament, according to Sasha Uzunov, an Australia-based journalist and an expert on Macedonian politics. And it has made Mizrahi “a very visible politician,” he said. Both that speech and her push against the name change have turned Mizrahi “in a way into a hero” for many people in North Macedonia, Susha added. She is also speaking for many Bulgarian Jews, said Lyna Degen, a Bulgaria-born Dutch-Jewish psychologist who has written extensively about the Holocaust in her native country. “The danger in Macedonia, as I see it, is that the leader of the country is willing to revise the history of the Holocaust in order to please Bulgaria, whose support they need in order to become a member of the EU,” Degen said. “It is very unusual that a Jewish politician raises awareness for the atrocities perpetrated by Bulgarian troops,” Degen added. “I don’t know of any other politician doing this” besides Mizrahi.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Same morons, same story, different year.

https://www.rt.com/in-motion/377863-march-nationalists-sofia-general/

Torch-lit march to honor far-right WWII General in Bulgaria

19 Feb, 2017

Hundreds of far-right nationalists from around Europe marched through Sofia on Saturday to honor World War II general, Hristo Lukov, known for his Nazi affiliations. The 'Lukov March,' organized by the far-right Bulgarian National Legions (BNL), has been held annually since 2003, involving participants from France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, and Hungary. Heavy police presence was deployed in the Bulgarian capital as the march proceeded to lay flowers at General Lukov's house, the site of his assassination in 1943. Lukov was minister of war from 1935-1938, and led the Union of Bulgarian National Legions (UBNL).

[George S.]

gorgi all were asking is to admit passt wrongs to right them & to move on.Do you think you can do that on a national level??Why is it so hard.??

[GeorgiDimitrov]

I can assure you that we all (Bulgarian) call people leaving in the Macedonian part of Bulgaria "Macedonian" or short Маке! The music that we all like from that part and your part we call Macedonian music!

OK TrueMacedonian, I've red that article and I admit that a lot of it is true. Only the frequently used word "NGO" is bothering me...
Anyway, to all, you nay find interesting the paper from the same author - Tchavdar Marinov, named: ‘We, the Macedonians’. The Paths of Macedonian Supra-Nationalism (1878-1912), can be downloaded here: http://www.cas.bg/en/cas-finalized-p...-1912-102.html ( direct link: http://www.cas.bg/downloadwp.php?id=102 )

Cheers

[George S.]

Its not in your interest to speak favourable for macedonian existence.Hence laughter & ridicule & denials sound familiar.

[GeorgiDimitrov]

The Macedonians from bulgaria from the video clips i posted, clearly say that you are big liar. They say clearly "There is no Aegean Vardar or Pirin Macedonia. Macedonia is one and is not bulgarian. They also say that the Bulgarian tribe is the dirtiest"

Those are words of Macedonians from Pirin, and they are certainly more reliable than words of some anonymous ignorant liar like you. Cheers.

Are you sure those from the video are Bulgarians? Smells like propaganda to me.

I just had a colleague of mine sitting in my office and I did show him the videos and your last comments about Pirin and the human rights. He was laughing. He is from Goce Delchev town of Bulgaria....

[GeorgiDimitrov]

Unfortunately for this Booger he brings nothing remotely academic to the table. When confronted with claims he seems to typically booger out, duck, and weave like a slithering grk. Here you go Boogarin -

http://www.gce.unisg.ch/~/media/Internet/Content/Dateien/InstituteUndCenters/GCE/Euxeinos%20Folder/Marinov_Euxeinos%202_2011.ashx

I recommend you read it all. But also read this from the author:


I still have living family members in Pirin. They call themselves Macedonian. Never boogarin.

TM, Interestin paper, I'll read it all ...

[George S.]

gorgi your kind exists on lies & hopes people are blind to their surroundings.When people are denied basic rights of which they are in PIRIN.Your side is reduced to just outright lying.Go & look at the reports written in pirin about the beatings & manupilations of the stats for the census.How the Bulgarians try repeatedly year after year to falsify how many Macedonians there are in pirin.People are beaten up for associating as Macedonians.

[ramo]

I actually like all the insults. They witness that you are sort of cornered by my questions.
"The language you speak The culture you follow isn't that borrowed from Macedonians? yes it is."
lol and Maybe I'm from the race of Makedon ?
"She led a very sheltered life of denial etc till it all shrivelled up.& forgot what the real ity was in other words she absorbed the Bulgarian propaganda."
Is she, or it is you that absorbed Communist Stalin-Tito propaganda and turned your back on Bulgaria?

The Macedonians from bulgaria from the video clips i posted, clearly say that you are big liar. They say clearly "There is no Aegean Vardar or Pirin Macedonia. Macedonia is one and is not bulgarian. They also say that the Bulgarian tribe is the dirtiest"

Those are words of Macedonians from Pirin, and they are certainly more reliable than words of some anonymous ignorant liar like you. Cheers.

[George S.]

THe man TM is right you are too clever for words.Are the boogarins doing anything different to the grks. No its the same thing of denial of rights and the non existence of Macedonians in Pirin.You just ignoring the truth about Macedonians in pirin.Whatever you do will be ignored as you are committing atrocities on the Macedonians.Also let me remind you of what ilinden really means .Look at whats happened to the grks they are befallen.You know what we are expecting another ilinden St Elijah day where you are totally annihiliated without a Macedonian lifting a finger.Let me tell you now your Bulgaria will be overrun by gypsies by 2050 & there is nothing you can do.Nothing !IN between who knows what else you will get.(that will be a surprise for you!)

[TrueMacedonian]

Unfortunately for this Booger he brings nothing remotely academic to the table. When confronted with claims he seems to typically booger out, duck, and weave like a slithering grk. Here you go Boogarin -

http://www.gce.unisg.ch/~/media/Internet/Content/Dateien/InstituteUndCenters/GCE/Euxeinos%20Folder/Marinov_Euxeinos%202_2011.ashx

I recommend you read it all. But also read this from the author:

Apart from the overblown claims in the cultural sphere, these in politics and statehood are also worth mentioning. The medieval Bulgarian state map has been unabashedly stretched out in both historic atlases and T-shirts. Even though there is no lack of irony in the way the slogan “Bulgaria on three seas” is perceived today, the broader public predominantly gives credit to a formidable list of “lost lands” that Bulgaria is – both “historically” and “ethnically” – entitled to claim. Top place in the list is allocated to Macedonia, a land that for any good reason qualifies as Bulgarian national myth, like the Kosovo myth for Serbia or the Transylvanian myth for Hungary. what seems to provide the key frustration here is the Macedonians’ bid to be a separate nation. The notion that the latter was “artificially created” within communist Yugoslavia and that Macedonian language is no more than a Bulgarian dialect has enjoyed an outstanding currency – even among intellectuals who tend to go quite “liberal” on historical issues. In parallel with that, the history taught at school has cultivated among Bulgarians the feeling that they have always lost – unfairly, despite their gallantry at the battle field – on the political arena: this has partially been attributed to imperialist tendencies among the great powers (depending on political bias, these could be one or more West European countries, the West in general, or Russia). nurtured by history textbooks, the Bulgarian martyrdom myth has been reinforced by the cliché that deep down its core this has ever been “a tolerant nation” that caused no pain to members of any other national community and sustained a unique ethnic coexistence model in its “own” state. In this section, preventing the deportation of around 50,000 Bulgarian Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II has become the most exploited historical event. Bulgarian society however has refused to shoulder any responsibility for more than 11,000 Jews who were deported from the occupied territories of Greece and Yugoslavia. The multiple campaigns for the expulsion of major portions of the domestic Muslim population since the 1878 creation of the Bulgarian state up until the 1980s, the abuse committed to this population group or the destruction of the Ottoman cultural heritage have never been a popular discussion topic. The crimes carried out against other Balkan people during the second Balkan war in 1913 or during the two world wars get even less of a mention.

I still have living family members in Pirin. They call themselves Macedonian. Never boogarin.

[George S.]

dobn't worry they will get screwed by the gypsies as they will take over by 250 all of Bulgaria.Bad Luck.That is forcasted to happen.there will be more gypsies and less bulgars.I don't know what will mean for pirin Macedonia though?

[Dejan]

As I said, Bulgarians are never to be trusted. Every Macedonian should know that

[George S.]

How about your grandfather has n't he got BS Bulgarian stories to tell..Gorgi there is nothing new from the Bulgarian side.They pretend to be our friend.In the meantime they have taken our pirin Macedonia.Also they want Vardar & Aeagean Macedonia.Your'e not telling us anything new we know the Bulgarian side too well.Also you are not fooling anyone as we are on to you gorgi.