The Bulgarian people, not the Soviet Army rescued the Bulgarian Jews, the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on occasion of a recent statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova. When Bulgarian citizens stand on the rails to stop the trains travelling to the Nazi death camps, when representatives of the Bulgarian political, economic and intellectual elite write protest letters in defense of the Bulgarian Jews and high representatives of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church join the Jews who were threatened of deportation saying that they will go together to the death camps, the Red Army was thousands of kilometers away from Bulgaria’s borders. Without belittling the importance and the role of the Red Army in the eradication of Nazism in Europe during the Second World War we must underline that such attempts aimed at replacing historical facts do not contribute to the universal cause of fighting antisemitism, racism and intolerance, the statement of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry further reads. It her statement on November 2 this year Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova criticized the desecration of the Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia saying that “such actions are particularly obscene, given that during the WW2 the deportation of 50,000 Bulgarian Jews and their certain death were prevented thanks to the Soviet soldiers.”
