The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust

At the outbreak of WWII, Bulgaria, an ally of Germany, issued anti-Semitic legislation that allowed for the deportation of 11,343 Jews from the provinces of Thrace and Macedonia; all but 12 of them died in concentration camps. This action was met with such outrage on the part of Jews and non-Jews, including many political insiders and the Orthodox Church, that the legislation was rescinded and no other Bulgarian Jews were sent to certain death. Although the government appeased Germany by claiming that this measure was merely temporary, shortly thereafter, Bulgaria fell to the Soviet Union, and its remaining Jews, nearly 50,000 strong, were spared. A French intellectual with Bulgarian roots, Tzvetan Todorov (Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps) explores the tenuous combination of circumstances that saved Bulgaria's Jews in The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust (trans. by Arthur Denner). ( July)