A Heroic Narrative about Bulgaria, the Jews and the Holocaust? Interview with Nadège Ragaru
Nadège Nagaru is the author of the recently published Bulgaria, the Jews, and the Holocaust: On the Origins of a Heroic Narrative (University of Rochester Press, 2023), available in Open access, in which she presents a thought-provoking and wide-ranging archival investigation encompassing 80 years and six countries (Bulgaria, Germany, the United States, Israel, North Macedonia, and Serbia), and explores the origins and perpetuation of this heroic narrative of Bulgaria’s past. She answers our questions in the interview below.
During the Second World War, Bulgaria occupied a unique position within the framework of the Tripartite Pact. Although this country signed the Pact (on 1 March 1941) and was an ally of Nazi Germany, Bulgaria refused to declare war on the USSR and to send troops to the Eastern Front. This alliance with the Reich enabled it to occupy territories in Yugoslavia (most of Vardar Macedonia; the Serbian region of Pirot) and Greece (Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia) that it had hoped to (re)conquer since the end of the First World War. Paradoxically, the Second World War was far less destructive for Bulgaria than the First (...)
