Jewish prosecutors, part of a special Jewish section of the Bulgarian Peoples Court, are at work preparing indictments against persons charged with persecution of Jews luring the pro-Nazi regime in Bulgaria, it was learned here today.
Among those who will be tried shortly are overseers in forced labor camps to which about 8,500 Jewish men between the ages of 20 and 45 were sent. These camps were intended to be a slow method of exterminating the Jews, at the same time that labor was being secured from them. They worked from dawn to dusk, were given little food and subjected to all sorts of mistreatment.
A Jewish section of an Anti-Fascist Exhibition which opened here this week. depicts graphically the sufferings endured by the Jews in the four years that Bulgaria was allied with Germany. Among the documents on exhibition is a plan outlined by Aloxander Beleff, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, under which all Jews were to be banished from Bulgaria, and sent in slow stages to death camps in Poland. The plan provided for Jews to be sent to the provinces, from there to Vienna and other Danube cities and eventually to Poland.
The pre-Nazi Government did succeed in expelling the Jews from Sofia and other large cities to provincial villages, but intercession by democratic clements and the clergy prevented the deportation to Poland of Jews from Bulgaria proper, although over 20,000 were sent to death camps from Bulgarian-occupied Macedonia and Thrace. Many other documents and photos of deportations are also on exhibit.
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