If you were a Jew living in Bulgaria, Denmark, or Finland at the start of WW II, you had a nearly 100% chance of not being deported to a death camp. If you were a Jew living in Norway, your chances were closer to 66%. That's a significant difference.
I don't mean to imply that this reflects badly on Norway. It was an occupied country and acquitted itself better than many. What set Bulgaria apart was not some moral superiority on the part of the population or the government*, but that at the very point that the government was rounding up 20,000 Jews to send them to Poland, a small group of people were able to mount an effective political action and stop the operation in its tracks. Had circumstances been different, the same thing might have happened in Norway. Had circumstances been different, Bulgaria might now bear the ignominy of having wiped out its entire Jewish population.
*Indeed, even Peshev, the hero of Todorov's story, sounds like a pretty unpleasant character in many ways.
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rosecarmine
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Date: 2012-08-12 04:26 am (UTC)I don't mean to imply that this reflects badly on Norway. It was an occupied country and acquitted itself better than many. What set Bulgaria apart was not some moral superiority on the part of the population or the government*, but that at the very point that the government was rounding up 20,000 Jews to send them to Poland, a small group of people were able to mount an effective political action and stop the operation in its tracks. Had circumstances been different, the same thing might have happened in Norway. Had circumstances been different, Bulgaria might now bear the ignominy of having wiped out its entire Jewish population.
*Indeed, even Peshev, the hero of Todorov's story, sounds like a pretty unpleasant character in many ways.