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National Constitutions, Liberal State, Fascist State and the Holocaust in Belgium and Bulgaria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

David Fraser

Extract

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In The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust, Tzetvan Todorov offers the following lesson from his study of the “rescue” of Bulgarian Jews from the Nazi killing machine:

“It seems that, once introduced into public life, evil easily perpetuates itself, whereas good is always difficult, rare and fragile. And yet possible.”

Type
Articles: Special Issue: Confronting Memories – Constitutionalization after Bitter Experiences
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 2: Article: Special Issue - Confronting Memories: European „Bitter Experiences“ and the Constitutionalization Process , 01 February 2005 , pp. 291 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Todorov, Tzetvan, The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust (2001).Google Scholar

2 Id., 40.Google Scholar

3 Maxime Steinberg, Un pays occupe et ses juifs 16 (1998).Google Scholar

4 Todorov 1 (note 1).Google Scholar

5 The Legalization of Racism in a Constitutional State: Democracy's Suicide in Vichy France, 50 Hastings L. J. 1 94. See, also, Curran's Racism's Past and Law's Future, 28 Vermont L. Rev. 1 (2004).Google Scholar

6 See The Fragility of Law: Anti-Jewish Decrees, Constitutional Patriotism and Collaboration Belgium 1940-1944, 14 Law and Critique 253 (2003). See, also, A Passive Collaboration: Bureaucracy, Legality and the Jews of Brussels, 1940-44 (unpublished draft manuscript, 2004).Google Scholar

7 In saying this, I am aware of the historical claims that the Bulgarians were pressured to adopt the Law for the Defence of the Nation by the Germans. This remains a controversial historical claim which I cannot resolve here. At the level of legal positivist analysis, however, it remains the case that the statute was approved by the Parliament and sanctioned by King Boris III and was, therefore, a Bulgarian legal measure.Google Scholar

8 Todorov 4 (note 1).Google Scholar

9 Cohen, David, The Monarcho-fascist Establishment, Nazi Germany and the Jewish Problem in Bulgaria, 19 Annual of the Central Board of the Social Cultural and Educational Association of the Jews in the People's Republic of Bulgaria 63 (1984) (hereafter Annual).Google Scholar

10 See Lindseth, Peter L., The Paradox of Parliamentary Supremacy: Delegation, Democracy and Dictatorship in Germany and France, 1920's-1950's, 113 Yale L. J. 1341 (2004).Google Scholar

11 I examine this in more detail in A Passive Collaboration (note 6).Google Scholar

12 I recognize that this argument is oversimplified from the standpoints of jurisprudential and political theory. I believe that it is nonetheless the case that ideas of Wilsonian liberalism and national identity played a central role in the construction of the Bulgarian nation state, just as ideals of bourgeois liberalism were at the heart of the emergence of the Belgian nation.Google Scholar

13 See Michael Bar-Zohar, Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews (1998) and Frederick B. Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940-1944 (1974).Google Scholar

14 Open Letter to the Deputies of the 25th Regular Assembly, id.Google Scholar

15 Id.Google Scholar

16 Id.Google Scholar

17 Id., 5. Underlining in original.Google Scholar

18 Id., 9.Google Scholar

19 Todorov 1 (note 1).Google Scholar

20 See Darker Legacies of Law in Europe: The Shadow of National Socialism and Fascism over Europe and its Legal Tradition (Christian Joerges / Navraj S. Ghaleigh, eds., 2003).Google Scholar

21 Chary 43 (note 13).Google Scholar

22 See OSS Research and Analysis Branch, Population Development of Bulgaria (1943).Google Scholar

23 See Bulgaria, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust 1 270 (Israel Gutman, ed., 1990).Google Scholar

24 The Destruction of the European Jews 2 744 (Revised and Definitive Edition, 1985).Google Scholar

25 4,273 Jews from Thrace and 7,381 Jews from Macedonia.Google Scholar

26 See Steinberg 27 (note 3).Google Scholar

27 From bystander to actor, 2 Journal of Human Rights 137 (2003).Google Scholar

28 Tzvetan Todorov, Facing the Extreme 288-289 (1996).Google Scholar

29 Id., 296.Google Scholar