"The Peshev Insurgency " Topic

"Dimitar Peshev was a middle ranking interwar Bulgarian politician of conservative persuasion. He served briefly as Bulgarian minister of Justice in the mid 1930s, then returned to the back benches with an honorific position in parliament. He survived the Second World War and, miraculously, the communist purges that followed, though he spent a year in prison. He died forgotten by his country in 1973. Today, however, all this has changed and Peshev is one of the most feted of all Bulgarians. Peshev's bust is to be found at the Council of Europe, there is a Peshev Plaza in New York and there is a ridge in Antarctica named after him (with moon craters the only modern celebrity that matters). So why should Dimitar Peshev's name excite so much attention? The answer is that in March 1943 Peshev led the resistance to Nazi deportations from Bulgaria and uniquely in Occupied or, as in Bulgaria, ‘bullied' Europe he resisted using constitutional means.

Peshev had actually voted, apparently reluctantly, for Bulgaria's anti-semitic legislation in 1941. However, in early 1943 with many others in Bulgaria he became alarmed at reports of a planned roundup of Jewish citizens. The event which transformed Peshev from a worried observer to an agent of change was an interview, curiously enough, with an old political enemy, Dimita Ikonomov. Ikonomov had witnessed in his home town, Dupnitsa, the transit of Thracian Jews: these were Bulgarian Jews living outside the borders of the country, but under Bulgarian protection. Ikonomov had been, with many in the town, so upset by the action, that he had come to tell Peshev of the horror of what he had seen. This was the first confirmation of rumours that Peshev had been hearing but from a reliable source. Peshev now began to collect information and quickly learnt that what had happened in Thrace was planned for Bulgaria itself…"
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