August 21 marked the 115th anniversary of the birth of a remarkable person – Boyan Vasilev Atanasov. In 1940, as the second secretary of the Bulgarian consulate in France, he accommodated dozens of Bulgarian Jews in the legation building in Paris and organized their transportation to Sofia, writes burgas24.bg, referring to POTV.
His efforts offer an illustration of the human potential to oppose world evil – not impulsively, but consciously and deliberately. And this in a time characterized by "the appalling silence and indifference of good people”, to use Martin Luther King's formulation.
Boyan Atanasov (August 21, 1909 – November 24, 1997) is the son of General Vasil Atanasov, graduated in law from Sofia University. He entered the foreign service in 1936 and worked in London, Paris, Lisbon and Washington.
His story was included in a special exhibit at UN headquarters in New York in April 2000, honoring diplomats from 24 countries who took extraordinary steps to rescue Jews from Nazi concentration camps. The exhibit says his is "one of the newly discovered cases of diplomatic heroism“.
Understanding context is key to narrative. In 1940, Atanasov operated in German-occupied France. The anti-Jewish policy of the Nazis was in full swing, the French Jews were being persecuted, and the official position of the Bulgarian government was that the Bulgarian Jews, welded by the war abroad, could be treated as local Jews.
Without permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sofia, without the knowledge of the then Bulgarian ambassador to France, Nikola Balabanov, Atanasov accommodated a group of Jews in the legation building in Paris and organized their transportation to Bulgaria with three hired wagons. The group included Bulgarian volunteers who fought on the side of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and were persecuted by the Franco regime in Spain. They had escaped from Spain but found Nazi-occupied France a dangerous place and were now desperate to leave France.
Many of these people find refuge in the Bulgarian consulate in Paris with the express consent of Atanasov. The group had to rely on a display of Bulgarian colors (made of pieces of white, green and red paper taped to the front door by the consular chancellor) with the inscription "Bulgarisches Eigentum“ (ie Bulgarian property).
"But it was a very weak defense against the Gestapo men. I was afraid at any moment that they would be taken away", said Atanasov.
"Atanasov's List" not a metaphor alluding to Spielberg's famous film. The list exists, it is in the Central State Archives.
Atanasov himself prepared the three-page typewritten list of travelers, putting Bulgarian names at the top. He personally provided the necessary documents and passes to cross the borders of several European countries. He personally signed the obligation to pay the transport costs of 33,000 Reichsmarks in order to speed up the procedure - and to avoid discussing the case at a higher level in Berlin or Sofia.
As a faithful servant, he called Ambassador Balabanov – but only after he personally sends the group to the station. "Atanasov, they will fire you with a telegram and you will pay this amount for the rest of your life...”, was the reaction of the disappointed ambassador.
Balabanov refused to take responsibility for the actions of the secretary of the legation. And Atanasov knew what he was doing. "I violated the Bulgarian laws in order to obey the higher law," Atanasov would say decades later. "I think I did a good deed. And God will forgive me!“
The above quotes are from an interview revealing many details about the conduct of the operation: Atanasov's conversations with the German railway and military authorities ("for two weeks we were shuffled from one office to another like a ping-pong ball"); obligation signed with "indelible pencil“ for the payment of 33,000 Reichsmarks, a sum he was unable to dispose of; Atanasov's dispute with a German official who suggested that Jewish names be crossed out as a condition of his permission; dispute whether the case is subject to German or Bulgarian laws...
This interview, conducted on September 22, 1993 by Roy and Anne Freed for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, does not cover the period after 1950, when Atanasov's service was terminated. He returns to Bulgaria, and his family has fallen into a difficult financial situation, which forces the experienced diplomat to do hard physical work. The man who saved so many lives of Spanish Republicans and Jews was sent into penury.
The truth was that Atanasov's fate was not the worst. Of the 43 people's representatives in the 25th National Assembly who signed the "Certificate of Honor" of Dimitar Peshev from March 17, 1943 against the deportation of Bulgarian Jews to the Nazi death camps, twenty were shot after September 9, 1944; and the others, including Peshev himself, sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.
What Atanasov did was not recognized by the Communists, nor in any way made public, but he was left free to adjust to the new environment - which was not particularly friendly. "He didn't see it as a tragedy... I saw it that way, but neither did he," said his son Bogdan.
Fortunately, Atanasov was fluent in several languages: English, French, Portuguese, German. And like his wife Teodora Hadjimisheva, he could work as a translator for: Jorge Amadou, Hemingway, Daniel Defoe, William Faulkner, Voltaire…
Almost unknown in Bulgaria, his work was recognized abroad: in March 2000, trees were planted in Israel in memory of Boyan Atanasov for his humanity and the rescue of dozens of Jews during the Second World War
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Aug 25, 2024 06:14 257