Bulgaria does not recognize Macedonian minority, and its troops send Macedonian Jews to Treblinka, according to an authoritative German newspaper
Bulgaria is on the verge of having a new government, and Brussels hopes that it will lift the veto on the beginning of the European Union’s negotiations with Northern Macedonia, writes the authoritative Frankrufter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAC). The article is published on the eve of the last meeting of the European Council for the year, which will be held on 16 and 17 December. Two days earlier is the preliminary meeting at which Bulgaria must say what it will do with Northern Macedonia.
The author Michael Martens, FAC correspondent in Vienna, practically advocates the North Macedonian point of view on the disputes with Bulgaria, as explains that Boyko Borissov’s government has blocked the talks with explanations “which not only Brussels considers absurd”.
He gave a brief overview of the current situation, accusing Bulgaria’s last two presidents, Rosen Plevneliev and Rumen Radev, of adhering to a nationalist line:
“Skopje should recognize that the Macedonian language is in fact only a Bulgarian dialect and that the Macedonian nation has evolved from the Bulgarian one,” Sofia said. But anyone who believes that only a change of government in Bulgaria will restore common sense and that strange academic debates will no longer hinder EU policy in the Balkans may turn out to be mistaken. The “name dispute” between Athens and Skopje hampered the Western integration of the Balkan state for more than a quarter of a century before being resolved in 2018 with the renaming of Macedonia to Northern Macedonia. – writes FAC. – The Bulgarian-Macedonian historical dispute can also last for many years. Kiril Petkov is considered a pragmatic man who looks ahead and does not want to get lost in the depths of the Balkan debate on history. But he must also take into account coalition partners, including the partially nationalist Socialist Party. And it is true not only for its supporters: Bulgaria’s dislike of Northern Macedonia is deeper than it seems to many who look away. President Rumen Radev (like his predecessor Rosen Plevneliev) holds a nationalist line on the issue. However, this was not noticed abroad before, because the Bulgarian positions were in the shadow of the loud Greek-Macedonian “name dispute”.
The article also claims that:
“After the last parliamentary elections in Sofia, there will even be a party that openly denies the right to exist in Northern Macedonia – the right-wing radical Vazrazhdane. She wants Northern Macedonia to unite with Bulgaria because it is the “second Bulgarian state” to emerge due to historical unhappiness. The fact that there is no Macedonian nation for this party is self-evident. “Vazrazhdane, with only 13 deputies, is the smallest of the seven parliamentary groups and is lonely in its outright irredentism.”
The author Martens points out the “absurd” demands with which Bulgaria vetoed the EU-Northern Macedonia talks, and “from which the future governing coalition in Bulgaria does not distance itself”.
The first is that Bulgaria insists that the northern Macedonian constitution state that there is a Bulgarian minority in the country. This could have been made easier “if Bulgaria does not systematically exclude its own citizens, who for decades have identified themselves as Macedonians. The deprivation of the (currently very small) Macedonian minority in Bulgaria has survived the collapse of communism.” Sofia even ignored several European Court of Human Rights rulings to stick to the notion that there is no Macedonian minority in the country“.
Second is President Radev’s insistence that northern Macedonia prevent a “hate speech” against Bulgaria, while forgetting many facts from 1941-44, including the fact that Bulgarian occupation forces send Macedonian Jews to Treblinka concentration camp:
The “distortion of history” had to disappear from the “media, museums, public and state policy.” is for the period 1941-1944, when Bulgaria, at that time a junior partner of Hitler’s “axis”, occupied most of present-day northern Macedonia, as well as parts of northern Greece. Sofia pursues a reckless policy of Bulgarianization. About 7,200 Jews in the country were gathered in ghettos by the Bulgarian occupation authorities and deported to Treblinka. Today, however, Sofia claims it was a “hate speech” when monuments or memorial plaques in northern Macedonia are reminiscent of the “Bulgarian fascist occupation”. The question arises – what else can be called fascist, if you do not have to describe a regime that actively participates in the Holocaust? The fact that the Jews themselves in Bulgaria were not extradited by the Germans does not change anything here. “
At the end of the article, the FAC also claims that the northern Macedonian prime minister Zoran Zaev “from the hasty submission to Sofia” has announced that his government will order the removal of several memorial plaques in memory of the “Bulgarian fascist occupation”, for which he was sharply criticized by northern Macedonian historians.
“Zaev was accused of falsifying history. If Skopje wanted to respond to all of Sofia’s demands, then it really would. The falsification of history has so far not been a criterion for joining the EU. But I think Bulgarians want to make it a criterion. “Northern Macedonia cannot agree to such a thing because of the very respect for EU values,” the FAC added.
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