Na Carewcu Nikoły Naczowa – antysemityzm po bułgarsku?

Abstract

The relations between Bulgarians and Jews are seen mainly through the events of the Second World War, which resulted in saving the Jewish population from the doom due to the stance taken by the public authorities, the Orthodox Church and Bulgarian people. Although the number of such works is limited, the significant majority of authors who write about issues relating to the history of Jews in Bulgaria focus on events of the early 1940’s. The common feature of these works is peaceful co-existence between Bulgarians and Jews and lack of any anti-Semitic incidents. However, it seems that such approach might prove to be an oversimplification. It is obvious that while analysing anti-Semitism in Bulgaria they are incomparable to what was happening in the Western Europe and Russia. Bulgaria was free from Jewish ghettoes, pogroms and massacres. It doesn’t mean though that Bulgaria was free from prejudice or even open enmity towards Jews. Such attitudes weren’t manifested as aggressively as elsewhere but they existed in the political, religious and cultural life of the country, and they can be traced in the Bulgarian literature.