The members of Sofia Lodge “Carmel” of B’nai B’rith express their profound indignation at the extreme antisemitism generated by Valeri Simeonov, Deputy Prime Minister from the coalition partner party United Patriots, in an interview given for the television channel Skat (click here to watch the original interview on YouTube).

In the aforementioned interview, the Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria not only generated fake populist theories as to who the real saviors of the Bulgarian Jews had been, but by equating the roles of Dimitar Peshev and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church with those of the pro-Nazi government of Bogdan Filov and Czar Boris III, he debased the deeds of the first mentioned. Furthermore, the Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria took the liberty to articulate the standpoint that the Jews, having sided with the new ruling government, turned on their saviors and became their executioners. Such a standpoint is more than depraved and reveals a much deeper and darker meaning.

The obvious aim of all this is not to commemorate the Bulgarian citizens who had stood up for their fellow-countrymen, but rather to wash away the brown stains from history and point to the Jews as the murderers of those who had rescued them.

Such a standpoint is profoundly thwarted and historically false and is replicates the classical antisemitic stereotypes of the wicked, malevolent, and ungrateful Jews. Understandably, Jews did take part in the anti-fascist resistance movement and in the government after the ninth of September, but no sign of evidence have we been given that the Jews turned upon the Righteous Ones or the Holy Synod of Bulgaria.

Such slanderous views are a disgrace to the memory of the saviors and to their descendants in the face of the Bulgarian democratic society and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.