Bulgaria, the Jews, and the Holocaust

NADÈGE RAGARU is a Research Professor at the Centres d'études internationales (CERI), in Paris, France.

• List of IllustrationsPrefaceIntroductionOn the "Rescue of the Jews" and National Exceptionalism: A Riddle of Received WisdomKnowledge about the Holocaust: Justice, Fiction, and ControversiesContours of an InvestigationNationalizing the Past, Internationally Reassessing the Cold War EraThe Way ForwardChapter 1. The Judicial Production of an Account of Anti-Jewish Persecution: The Genesis of a Heroic NarrativeJudging in Time of WarThe (In)visibility of Anti-Jewish Crimes in the "General Trials"The Construction of a Judicial Cause by Bulgarian Communist JewsA Sketch of the Trial Scene Courtroom 11The Germans, the Fascists, and the "Good People": Drawing the Perimeter of Guilt A Fascist is an Anti-Semite... and Vice VersaThe Euphemization of Jewish Suffering The Posterity of the Court: A Central ElisionChapter 2. Deportation of the Jews, from Belomorie to the Screen: Negotiating a "Socialist" Reading of the War Cinemas on Unequal Terms in Bulgaria and East GermanyElusive Presences of the Holocaust on the ScreensOne Co-production, Two Institutions, Several Agendas Konrad Wolf and Angel Wagenstein, a Dear Friendship Shooting Notes, and Other DigressionsScript, Storyboard, and Film: Effects of Cutting and FramingTwo Very Different Wars: The Bulgarian Lens Negotiating an East-East Reading of Nazism: German Polychromy?Jewish Fates, in a Minor KeyJewish Passivity: A Question of Gender?Christian Signs forJewish Suffering? A Transnational Symbolic RepertoireChapter 3. The Deportation of Jews from Northern Greece: The Mysterious Journeys of a 1943 Film FootageArchival Inventories as Texts and GazeA Film withoutan Author or Instructions? Scrutinizing Frames that Resist AnalysisFrom Visual Document to Legal Evidence: The Beckerle CaseJudicial Cooperation between West Germany, the United States, Israel, and Bulgaria: A Tale of the Cold WarWhen Art Meets the Intelligence Community Cultural Diplomacy and the "Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews"The "Rescue" Goes West: Managing Scarcity and Acquisition CompetitionsManaging Scarcity and Acquisition CompetitionsEpilogueChapter 4. Accounts of "Rescue" and Deportation in Dialogue: Memory Controversies after 1989Bringing Back the Polyphony of the Past: (In)divisible TruthsWhen History takes Center StageRe-negotiating the Territorial Span of Bulgaria's Historical NarrativeWords and Walls of Conflict in Balkan Jewish Communities The "Blagovest Sendov" Affair: A Bulgarian Forest in the (Domestic) Political ArenaDimităr Pešev: A New Topography of MemoryChapter 5. Fruitful Disputes? Transnational Mobilizations and the Institutionalization of a Space of DissensusCharting a New HistoriographyBulgarian-Macedonian Holocaust ControversiesWhen European Institutions Discuss History and Memory Games of Scale, Games of Chess: Debating Bulgaria's Memory Policies Remembering the Holocaust to Fight Anti-Semitism: A Room forConvergence?In the Spotlight of Euro-Atlantic IntegrationConclusionHistoriographical DisputesWhat We Talk About When We Talk About the HolocaustJewish Voices in the Writing of the PastChallenges of the Page: Leafing Through Time, Speaking the SeenAppendix: The March 1943 Deportations from Territories Occupied by BulgariaBibliographyIndex

Nadège Ragaru's book, translated from French, offers a sweeping study of the politics, geopolitics and varied tools of historical mythmaking. At the heart of the book is the tension between Bulgaria's refusal to deport its Jewish citizens during the Second World War while failing to block the deportation of Jews from the territories it occupied in Macedonia and Thrace.Her book stands out for its deep archival work-reaching archives from the Balkans, to Israel, Germany, France and the United States-its careful use of diaries, memoirs, and interviews, and approach to the nature of collective memory. It is an important work.