Trial of 54 Anti-semitic Bulgarian Officials Opens in Sofia

Indictments against 64 of the less prominent war criminals charged with persecution of Jews were placed before the Peoples’ Court here today by a special prosecutor. Berith was asked for some and long prison terms for others. The chief instigators of the anti-Semitic measures, such as the regents, ministers and deputies, have already been convicted and many of them executed.

The defendants now being tried consist mainly of officials of the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, directors of Jewish labor camps, and liquidators of Jewish property. In presenting the indictments, the prosecutor stressed that the Bulgarian people have always been opposed to anti-Semitic propaganda and said that racial legislation was encoted as a result of “the cervility of the fascist governors to their German masters, and their desire to enrich themselves at the expense of the Jews.”

Branding as demagoguery the charge by the fascist press and radio that Jews were a bad influence on the political and economic life of the nation, the prosecutor pointed out that with a few exceptions the Jewish population was composed chefly of poor workers, artisans, peddlers and intellectuals. The “law for protection of the nations”, which was issued in 1941, struck hardest at the poorest Jews, he said, since it imposed heavy taxes at the same time that it cut them off from the possibilities of earning a living.

The prosecutor reviewed other anti-Jewish measures introduced by the pro-German governments and the deportation of several thousand Jews to death camps in Poland. Replying to the charge that “Jews have nothing in common with the national ideals,” he asserted that if they were left unmolested they would support these ideals with the same fervor as the rest of the Bulgarian people.