Due to the corona virus development the annual “March of the Living”, that was about to take place today, March 11 2020, is postpone until further notice. We take this opportunity to publish a monologue written by Dr. Rachel-Shelly Levy Drummer, a direct descendant of the Levy and Abarbanel families of Bitola Macedonia
I am here to be the advocate of the Jews of Macedonia defeated by the Bulgarian Tsar Boris III and his army
“… The king canceled the order on March 10, 1943. Bulgarian Jewry breathed a sigh of relief: about 48,000 Bulgarian Jews were saved from extermination.” Thus ended an article on the rescue of the Jews of Bulgaria (Ha’aretz 16.4.2014) in a welcoming tone of praise to the Bulgarians. And I, a member of my second-generation family of a Macedonian family, was horrified! At home, they did not stop telling us how exactly on that damn night, on March 11, 1943, all the Jews of Macedonia-7144 were sent to the extermination-by whom? By those Bulgarians! None of those sent to Treblinka returned!
97 of the deportees are members of my immediate family – the Levy and Abarbanel families of Macedonia and the details. Yes, yes, those Bulgarians who sent to extermination also the Jews of Trakia in total destroyed without a blink 11343 Jews! And how shall I sing a song of praise to the Bulgarians! And how can an Israeli and some Jew sing a song of praise to the Bulgarians even if they did not send the Bulgarian Jews themselves to extermination?
he Bulgarian Czar Boris, who was Hitler’s ally, took power in Macedonia and Trakia by virtue of an agreement signed with Hitler. These areas were called the annexed territories (Bulgaria). The same Czar Boris who, under Bulgarian pressure, canceled the transport of the Bulgarian Jews to the camps, sent for extermination the Jews of the annexed territories without batting an eyelid. Thus, in the middle of that night, March 11, 1943, the Bulgarian army and police collected the 7,500 Macedonian Jews from whom they were sent for extermination in Treblinka 7144 in three transports from the “execution contractors” – the police and the Bulgarian army to the Germans and from there directly to extermination in the gas chambers in Treblinka! No one came back.
It seems that this matter was fully coordinated between the Bulgarian army and the SS: “The German Theodore Dannecker entrusted Alexander Belev, the commissar for Jewish affairs in Skopje, with the supervision of the liquidation of the Jews of Macedonia (Jenny Lebel, tide and break: 206). In her book: “The reports from the Bulgarian forces in the area flowed into the heart: On March 11, 1943, at 5 am, the army would impose a curfew in the quarters where the Jews’ homes were concentrated.” (Lebel, 208) During the period between the transports on March 21, 1943, Beckerle, the German ambassador to Sofia, Alexander in the Bulgarian heart, and Theodore Dannecker of Germany, and Nir Baruch in his book notes that “together with the extermination of Yehud The Bulgarian population is responsible for the extermination of 11343 Jews sent by the Bulgarians to the death camps “(Nir Baruch, Destruction and Survival in United Bulgaria, 2003: 9) The extermination of the Macedonian community that took place under the responsibility of the Bulgarian army was almost total.
The few survivors lived because they joined the partisans, carried foreign passports, or were doctors and pharmacists. But worse than this destruction was the forgetfulness – the Macedonian Jews who were mostly exterminated (97%) had no one left to use their mouths to tell their stories and remember their destruction by the Bulgarian army and under the command of Tsar Boris.
In 1994, a monument was erected in the KKL-JNF Forest in memory of Tsar Boris for the rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews, and a public committee was set up in the KKL-JNF headed by Justice Beisky. The commission concluded that the JNF had to remove the sign in memory of the Tsar because of his direct responsibility for the destruction of the Jews of Macedonia Thrace, the time had come to uproot the myth of the Bulgarian myth that was in the public consciousness, and that Boris Boris III was Hitler’s partner and ally and was responsible for the extermination of all 7,140 Macedonian Jews And another 4,000 Thracian Jews.
True, the Bulgarian Jews were saved from annihilation, but it was precisely those who decided not to send them from the camps that were the destroyers of the Jews of Macedonia. We, the few survivors of Macedonia, are turning to you. The survivors of Bulgaria and their children, together with the memory of the rescue of the Jews of Bulgaria, please remind us of the destruction of your Macedonian brothers (and sometimes your family) by those who did not send you to extermination.
As the only descendant of a magnificent family sent to be exterminated by Tsar Boris and the Bulgarian army, I demand that justice be done! The murder of 11,500 Jews in Macedonia and Thrace is murder is murder! Even if the murderers refrained from murdering another 48,000 Jews, even then they are still murderers, and so should be noted! Dr. Rachel Levy-Drummer, Kiryat Ono
Center: Dr. Rachel Levy Drummer and Ambassador Dan Orian
