The Bulgarian ambassador to Israel did not attend a conference on the history of the Bulgarian Holocaust, including the deportation of Macedonian Jews, that took place last week. As you posted "The Times of Israel", conveying information to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the organizers stated that the ambassador's decision to withdraw from the event was the result of her government's attempts to erase from history the extradition of 11.000 Jews during the Second World War from today's Macedonia.

An embassy spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Ambassador Rumijana Bachvarova received a "last-minute invitation to welcome the conference" and "decided that it would be good to keep the conversations and discussions at the expert level of historians, without any political presence or participation in them." ".

The three-day event, titled "Persecution and Cooperation, Rescue and Survival: New Perspectives on Bulgaria and the Holocaust 80 Years Later," was organized by Yad Vashem, Bar-Ilan University and the Tel Aviv Cinematheque.

- It is a historical horrible truth that the Bulgarian government of Tsar Boris III delivered 11.343 Jews from Macedonia, Thrace and Pyrrhus to Nazi Germany and sent them to be killed in Treblinka. This is a historical event that does not require "clarification, comprehensive or otherwise," historian and lawyer Menachem Rosensaft, who gave the main speech at the event, told the agency.

This year marks 80 years since the deportation of its Jewish population was prevented in Bulgaria. But in March 1943, the Bulgarians deported over 1.000 Macedonian Jews to the Nazi camps.

-By refusing to even greet the conference participants, Ambassador Bachvarova, perhaps acting on orders, seems intent on continuing her government's attempts to obscure history by studiously refusing to acknowledge that Bulgaria has the blood of these 11.343 Jews. on his conscience - says Rosensaft, who is also the executive vice-president of the World Jewish Congress.

Event organizer and director Jackie Comforti, author of The Stolen Narrative of Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust (2021), said Bachvarova's approach to history was "propaganda-oriented." He adds that in Bulgarian "neo-Nazi circles" one can often read that "Jews are not grateful to have been saved."

According to Comforti, Bachvarova had previously been invited to an event while filming his film about these events, but she said she would not attend because it was an anti-Bulgarian event.