Bulgarian PM meets initiators of Nobel Prize nomination for Bulgarian Orthodox Church for role in preventing deportation of Jews to Holocaust
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov has held talks with three of the initiators of the campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church for its role in preventing the deportation of Bulgarian Jews to Holocaust death camps in the Second World War, the government press service said.
Borissov met Israeli former cabinet minister Dr Efraim Sneh, advocate Moshe Aloni and advocate Elisar Pleygil, the statement said.
The three are among the most active supporters of the initiative for the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to receive international recognition for its efforts to prevent about 50 000 Bulgarian Jews being sent to Nazi death camps where more than six million Jews were mass-murdered.
The idea of the nomination was announced during Borissov’s visit to the State of Israel in 2016 and is being backed by hundreds of descendants of Bulgarian Jews whose murders were prevented.
Israeli ambassador Irit Lilian also attended the meeting.
Borissov thanked the association for its commitment to the cause, which gives a voice to an unprecedented fact in world history, and at a time when the hate speech is heard the most. ”
There are events that should never be forgotten. Such an event is the Holocaust, but such an event is also the unification of a people under the spiritual leadership of its Church in defence of human life.”
Borissov said that Bulgarians were proud of belonging to a nation that in the darkest times had not remained indifferent to the fate of their Jewish fellow citizens, but had come to their defence.
He expressed his conviction that Bulgaria and its government would continue to oppose categorically any manifestations of intolerance and xenophobia, the government statement said.
