Boris III of Bulgaria

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Boris III

Boris III of Bulgaria
Tsar of Bulgaria
Reign 3 October 1918 28 August 1943
Predecessor Ferdinand I
Successor Simeon II

Consort Giovanna of Italy
Issue Princess Marie Louise
Simeon II of Bulgaria
Full name
Boris Klemens Robert Maria Pius Ludwig Stanislaus Xaver
House House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Father Ferdinand I of Bulgaria
Mother Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma
Born 30 January 1894
Sofia, Principality of Bulgaria
Died 28 August 1943 (aged 49)
Sofia, Kingdom of Bulgaria
Burial Rila Monastery
Signature

Religion Eastern Orthodox
prev Roman Catholic
Boris III, Tsar of Bulgaria (30 January [O.S. 18 January] 1894 28 August 1943), originally Boris
Klemens Robert Maria Pius Ludwig Stanislaus Xaver (Boris Clement Robert Mary Pius Louis
Stanislaus Xavier), son of Ferdinand I, came to the throne in 1918 upon theabdication of his
father, following the defeat of the Kingdom of Bulgaria during World War I. This was the
country's second major defeat in only five years, after the disastrous Second Balkan
War (1913). Under the Treaty of Neuilly, Bulgaria was forced to cede new territories and pay
crippling reparations to its neighbours, thereby threatening political and economic stability. Two
political forces, the Agrarian Union and the Communist Party, were calling for the overthrowing
of the monarchy and the change of the government. It was in these circumstances that Boris
succeeded to the throne.
Contents
1 Biography
o 1.1 Early reign
o 1.2 World War II
o 1.3 Death
2 Honours and memorials
3 Ancestors
4 See also
5 References
6 Bibliography
7 External links
Biography
Boris was born on 30 January 1894 in Sofia. He was the first son of Prince Ferdinand of
Bulgaria and his wife Princess Marie Louise.
In February 1896 his father paved the way for the reconciliation of Bulgaria and Russia with the
conversion of the infant Prince Boris from Roman Catholicism to Eastern Orthodox Christianity,
a move that earned Ferdinand the frustration of his wife, the animosity of his Catholic Austrian
relatives (particularly that of his uncle, Franz Joseph I of Austria) and excommunication from
the Catholic Church. In order to remedy this difficult situation Ferdinand christened all his
remaining children as Catholics. Nicholas II of Russia stood as godfather to Boris and met the
young boy during Ferdinand's official visit to Saint Petersburg in July 1898.
He received his initial education in the so-called Palace Secondary School which Ferdinand
created in 1908 solely for his sons. Later, Boris graduated from the Military School in Sofia,
then took part in the Balkan Wars. During the First World War he served as liaison officer of the
General Staff of the Bulgarian Army on the Macedonian front. In 1916 he was promoted
to colonel and attached again as liaison officer to Army Group Mackensen and the
Bulgarian Third Army for the operations against Romania. Boris worked hard to smooth the
sometimes difficult relations between Field Marshal Mackensen and the commander of the 3rd
army Lieutenant GeneralStefan Toshev. Through his courage and personal example he earned
the respect of the troops and the senior Bulgarian and German commanders, even that of
the Generalquartiermeister of the German Army Erich Ludendorff, who preferred dealing
personally with Boris and described him as excellently trained, a thoroughly soldierly person
and mature beyond his years.
[1]
In 1918 Boris was made amajor general and with the
abdication of his father acceded to the throne as Tsar Boris III on 3 October 1918.
Early reign

The Royal Sceptre of Boris III
One year after Boris's accession, Aleksandar Stamboliyski (or Stambolijski) of the Bulgarian
People's Agrarian Union was elected prime minister. Though popular with the large peasant
class, Stambolijski earned the animosity of the middle class and military, which led to his
toppling in a military coup on 9 June 1923, and his subsequent assassination. On 14 April 1925
an anarchist group attacked Boris's cavalcade as it passed through the Arabakonak Pass. Two
days later a bomb killed 150 members of the Bulgarian political and military elite in Sofia as
they attended the funeral of a murdered general (see St Nedelya Church assault). Following a
further attempt on Boris's life the same year military reprisals killed several thousand
communists and agrarians, including representatives of the intelligentsia. Finally, in October
1925, there was a short border war with Greece, known as theIncident at Petrich, which was
resolved with the help of the League of Nations.

Boris III of Bulgaria and Prime-minister Kimon Georgievduring the opening session of the IV International
Congress of Byzantine Studies (Sofia, 09. 09. 1934)
In the coup on 19 May 1934, the Zveno military organisation established a dictatorship and
abolished the political parties in Bulgaria. King Boris was reduced to the status of a puppet king
as a result of the coup.
[2]
The following year, he staged a counter-coup and assumed control of
the country by establishing a regime loyal to him. The political process was controlled by the
Tsar, but a form of parliamentary rule was re-introduced, without the restoration of the political
parties.
[3]
With the rise of the "King's government" in 1935, Bulgaria entered an era of prosperity
and astounding growth, which deservedly qualify it as the Golden Age of the Third Bulgarian
Kingdom. It lasted nearly five years.
[4]

Boris married Giovanna of Italy, daughter of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, first in a Catholic
ceremony inAssisi, Italy in October 1930 (attended by Benito Mussolini), and then at an
Orthodox ceremony in Sofia. The marriage produced a daughter, Maria Louisa, in January
1933, and a son and heir to the throne, Simeon, in 1937. Tsar Boris appeared on the cover
of Time on 20 January 1941 wearing a full military uniform.
[5][6]

World War II

Royal Monogram
In the early days of World War II, Bulgaria was neutral, but powerful groups in the country
swayed its politics towards Germany (with which Bulgaria had also been allied in World War I).
As a result of peace treaties that ended World War I the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty
of NeuillyBulgaria, which had fought on the losing side, lost two important territories to
neighboring countries: the northern plain of Dobrudja to Romania and Thrace to Greece. The
Bulgarians considered these treaties an insult and wanted the lands restored. When Adolf
Hitler rose to power, he tried to win Bulgarian King Boris IIIs allegiance. In the summer of
1940, after a year of war, Hitler hosted diplomatic talks between Bulgaria and Romania in
Vienna. On September 7, an agreement was signed for the return of South Dobrudja to
Bulgaria. The Bulgarian nation rejoiced. In March 1941, Boris allied himself with the Axis
powers, thus recovering most of Macedonia and Aegean Thrace back to his kingdom, as well
as protecting his country from being crushed by the GermanWehrmacht like
neighboring Yugoslavia and Greece. For recovering these territories Tsar Boris was called the
Unifier (Bulgarian: ). However he was unwilling to send troops to fight the
Soviet Union, although in that war the destinies of Bulgaria and Europe were to be decided. He
not only did not send regular troops to the Eastern Front, but refused to allow a legion of
volunteers to go, although in the German legation in Sofia were received 1500 requests from
Bulgarian young men who wanted to fight against Bolshevism.
[7]

However, in spite of this strong alliance, Boris was not willing to render full and unconditional
cooperation with Germany, despite the German presence inSofia and along the railway line
which passed through the Bulgarian capital to Greece.
Bulgarian Royalty
House of Saxe-Coburg
and Gotha


Ferdinand I

Children

Prince Boris

Prince Kyril

Princess Eudoxia

Princess Nadejda

Boris III

Children

Princess Marie Louise

Prince Simeon

Simeon II

Children

Prince Kardam

Prince Kyrill

Prince Kubrat

Prince Konstantin-Assen

Princess Kalina

But there was a price to be paid for the return of Dobrudja.
This was the adoption of the anti-Jewish Law for Protection
of the Nation ( ) on 24
December1940. This law was in accordance with
the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany and the rest of
Hitler's occupied Europe. Bulgarian Prime Minister Bogdan
Filov and Interior Minister Petur Gabrovski, both Nazi
sympathizers, were the architects of this law, which
restricted Jewish rights, imposed new taxes, and
established a quota for Jews in some professions. Many
Bulgarians protested in letters to their government. In March
1941, Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact and joined
the Axis coalition in hopes of regaining the territories of
Macedonia and Thrace. Tsar Boris signed it into law on 21
January 1941.[1].
In early 1943, in Bulgaria arrived the emissary of Hitler
Theodor Dannecker, an SS Hauptsturmfhrer and one
of Adolf Eichmann's associates who guided the campaign
for the deportation of the French Jews to death camps. In
February 1943, Dannecker met with the Commissar for
Jewish Affairs in Bulgaria Alexander Belev, famous with
his antisemitic and strong nationalist views. They both held
closed-door meetings and ended with a secret agreement
signed on 22 February 1943 for the deportations of 20,000
Jews from Aegean Thrace and Vardar Macedonia. These
are the territories conquered by Germany and legally not to
be under Bulgarian jurisdiction until after the end of the war.
The Jewish people in these territories were citizens
of Greece and Yugoslavia. Several days later, it became
clear that the number of Jews in Aegean Thrace and Vardar
Macedonia is 11,343. The "quota" of 20,000 came short. The revised pact called for sending
those 11,343 Jews from Thrace and Macedonia and another 8,000 from Bulgaria proper. The
remaining Bulgarian Jews were to be deported later.
The initial roundups were to begin on March 9, 1943. In Kyustendil, a town on the western
border, the boxcars were lined up. But as the news about the imminent deportations leaked,
protests began throughout Bulgaria. In the morning of March 9, a delegation from Kyustendil,
composed of eminent public figures and headed by Dimitar Peshev, the deputy speaker of the
National Assembly, met with Interior Minister Petur Gabrovski. Facing strong opposition within
the country, Gabrovski relented. The same day he sent telegrams to the roundup centers
cancelling the deportations.
A report of 5 April 1943, Adolph Hoffman, a German government adviser and police attache at
the German legation in Sofia (194344) wrote: "The Minister of Interior has received instruction
from the highest place to stop the planned deportation of Jews from the old borders of
Bulgaria". In fact, Gabrovskis decision was not taken on his own personal initiative, but had
come from the highest authority King Boris III. At the risk of direct confrontation with the
Reich, King Boris III refused to deport the Jews. Four hours before the deadline, the order was
cancelled. While Jews living in Bulgaria proper were saved, 11,343 Jews from Vardar
Macedonia and Thrace were deported to the death camps of Treblinka and Majdanek. The
Jewish subjects of these new territories were considered exiles under Hitler's military
command and under Hitler's direct jurisdiction. Bulgaria administered these lands, but Nazi
Germany did not formally annex them to Bulgaria and their status were to be resolved only
after the war.
Grandchildren

Prince Boris

Prince Beltran

Princess Mafalda

Princess Olimpia

Prince Tassilo

Prince Mirko

Prince Luks

Prince Tirso

Prince Umberto

Princess Sofia

V
T
E


Still reluctant to comply with the German deportation request, the Royal Palace utilized Swiss
diplomatic channels to inquire whether possible deportations of the Jews can happen to British-
controlled Palestine by ships rather than to concentration camps in Poland by trains. However,
this attempt was blocked by the British Foreign Minister, Anthony Eden.
[8]

Aware of Bulgaria's unreliability on the Jewish matter, the Nazis grew more suspicious about
the quiet activities in aid of European Jewry of an old friend of King Boris, Monsignor Angelo
Roncalli, then Apostolic delegate in Istanbul and future Pope John XXIII. Reporting on the
humanitarian efforts of Roncalli, his secretary in Venice and in the Vatican, Monsignor Loris F.
Capovilla writes: "Through his intervention, and with the help of King Boris III of Bulgaria,
thousands of Jews from Slovakia, who had first been sent to Hungary and then to Bulgaria,
and who were in danger of being sent to Nazi concentration camps, obtained transit visas
for Palestine signed by him."
[9]

Nazi pressure on King Boris III continued for the deportation of the Bulgarian Jewry. At the end
of March, Hitler invited the king to visit him. Upon returning home, King Boris ordered able-
bodied Jewishmen to join hard labor units to build roads within the interior of his kingdom. It is
widely believed this was the King's attempt to avoid deporting them. In May
1943, Dannecker and the Commissar for Jewish Affairs Belev headed to plan the deportation
of 50,000 Bulgarian Jews, to be loaded on steamers on the River Danube. Boris III continued
the cat and mouse game thatBulgarian Jews are needed for the construction of roads and
railway lines inside his kingdom. Nazi officials requested that Bulgaria deport its Jewish
population to German-occupied Poland. The request caused a public outcry, and a campaign
whose most prominent leaders were Parliament vice-chairman Dimitar Peshev and the head of
the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Stefan, was organized. Following this
campaign, Boris III refused to permit the extradition of Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews.
On June 30, 1943, Angelo Roncalli wrote to King Boris III of Bulgaria, asking for mercy for the
sons of the Jewish people. He wrote that King Boris should on no account agree to that
dishonorable action. On the copy of the letter the future Pope John XXIII noted, by hand, that
the King replied verbally to his message. The note goes on: "Il Re ha fatto qualche cosa" ("The
king has acted") and also noting the difficult situation of the monarch, Mgr. Roncalli stresses
once again: "Per, ripeto, ha fatto" (" But I repeat, he has acted").
[9]

An excerpt from the diary of Rabbi Daniel Zion, the spiritual leader of the Jewish community in
Bulgaria during the war years, reads: "Do not be afraid, dear brothers and sisters! Trust in the
Holy Rock of our salvation ... Yesterday I was informed by Bishop Stephen about his
conversation with the Bulgarian king. When I went to see Bishop Stephen, he said: "Tell your
people, the King has promised, that the Bulgarian Jews shall not leave the borders of Bulgaria
...". When I returned to the synagogue, silence reigned in anticipation of the outcome of my
meeting with Bishop Stephen. When I entered, my words were: "Yes, my brethren, God heard
our prayers ..."
[9]

Most irritating for Hitler, however, was the Tsar's refusal to declare war on the Soviet Union or
send Bulgarian troops to the Eastern front. On 9 August 1943, Hitler summoned Boris to a
stormy meeting at Rastenburg, East Prussia, where Tsar Boris arrived by plane
from Vrazhdebna on Saturday, 14 August. At Rastenburg the King asserts his stance once
again not to send Bulgarian Jews to death camps in Poland and Germany. While Bulgaria had
declared a 'symbolic' war on the distant United Kingdom and the United States, at that meeting
Boris once again refused to get involved in the war against the Soviet Union, giving two major
reasons for his unwillingness to send troops to Russia. First, many ordinary Bulgarians had
strong Russian sentiments; and second, the political and military position of Turkey remained
unclear. The 'symbolic' war against the Western Allies, however, turned into a disaster for the
citizens of Sofia as the city was heavily bombarded by the US and the British Royal Air Force
in 1943 and 1944. Nevertheless, the bombardments started only after Boris' death.
Bulgarias opposition came to a head at this last official meeting between Hitler and King Boris
III in August 1943. Reports of the meeting indicate that Hitler was furious at the King for
refusing to join the war against the USSR and to deport the Jews within his kingdom.
[10]
At the
end of the meeting, it was agreed that the Bulgarian Jews were not to be deported for King
Boris had insisted that the Jews were needed for various laboring tasks including road
maintenance." This act of bravery displayed by King Boris saved all 50,000 Jews of Bulgaria.
Two weeks later on August, 28th 1943, King Boris III died.
Death

The grave of Tsar Boris III in the Rila Monastery

Wood-carving made by inhabitants of the village of Osoi, Debar district, with the inscription: To its Tsar
Liberator Boris III, from grateful Macedonia.
Shortly after returning to Sofia from a meeting with Hitler, Boris died of apparent heart failure
on 28 August 1943.
[11]
According to the diary of the German attache in Sofia at the time,
Colonel von Schoenebeck, the two German doctors who attended the king Sajitz and Hans
Eppinger both believed that the king had died from the same poison that Dr. Eppinger had
allegedly found two years earlier in the postmortem examination of the Greek prime
ministerIoannis Metaxas, a slow poison which takes weeks to do its work, and which causes
the appearance of blotches on the skin of its victim before death.
[12]

Boris was succeeded by his six-year-old son Simeon II under a Regency Council headed by
Boris's brother, Prince Kiril of Bulgaria.
Following a large and impressive state funeral at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia,
where the streets were lined with weeping crowds, the coffin of Tsar Boris III was taken by train
to the mountains and buried in Bulgaria's largest and most important monastery, the Rila
Monastery. After taking power in September 1944, the Communist-dominated government had
his body exhumed and secretly buried in the courtyard of the Vrana Palace near Sofia. At a
later time the Communist authorities removed the zinc coffin from Vrana and moved it to a
secret location, which remains unknown to this day. After the fall of communism, an excavation
attempt was made at the Vrana Palace, in which only Boris's heart was found, as it had been
put in a glass cylinder outside the coffin. The heart was taken by his widow in 1993 to Rila
Monastery where it was reinterred.
A wood-carving is placed on the left side of his grave in the Rila monastery, made on 10
October 1943 by inhabitants of the village of Osoi, Debar district. The wood-carving has the
following inscription:

To its Tsar Liberator Boris III, from grateful Macedonia.

Honours and memorials
The United States Congress proclaimed King Boris III savior of fifty thousand Bulgarian Jews
on 12 May 1994.
King Boris III was posthumously awarded the Jewish National Fund's Medal of the Legion of
Honor Award. The first non-Jew to receive one of the Jewish community's highest honors.
The British Royal Victorian Order. The Russian Order "St. Anna". The Romanian "Caroll III".
Distinctions of Italy, Germany, Austria, Poland, and others.
The Anti-Defamation League and Chabad have also honored King Boris III for refusing to
sacrifice his Jewish subjects to the Nazi juggernaut.
Tsar Boris III Boulevard is one of the main boulevards in Sofia , Varna and Plovdiv.
Borisova gradina is the largest park in Sofia.
A huge picture of Tsar Boris hangs in the Alexandrov compound in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
In 1998, to thank Tsar Boris, Bulgarian Jews in the United States and the Jewish National Fund
erected a monument in the The Bulgarian Forest in Israel, honoring Tsar Boris as a savior of
Bulgarian Jews. In July, 2003, public committee headed by Israeli Chief Justice Dr. Moshe
Beiski decided to remove the memorial from the The Bulgarian Forest," because Bulgaria had
consented to the delivery of the Jews from occupied territory of Macedonia and Thrace to the
Germans.[2].
References
1. Jump up^ "Ludendorff's own story, August 1914 November 1918: the Great War from
the siege of Lige to the signing of the armistice as viewed from the grand headquarters of
the German Army Volume I", Harper 1919, , page 301.
2. Jump up^ Tsar's Coup Time, 4 February 1935. retrieved 10 August 2008
3. Jump up^ Balkans and World War I SofiaEcho.com
4. Jump up^ King of Mercy, by Pashanko Dimitroff, Great Britain, 1986
5. Jump up^ King Boris III Time, 20 January 1941. Retrieved 14 April 2010.
6. Jump up^ World War: Lowlands of 1941 Time, 20 January 1941. Retrieved 14 April 2010.
7. Jump up^ III: - , , , 30
January 2014
8. Jump up^ A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time by Howard M.
Sachar, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007
9. ^ Jump up to:
a

b

c
"Crown of Thorns" by Stephane Groueff, London, 1987
10. Jump up^ Naomi Martinez "The Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews during World War II
11. Jump up^ "Bulgarian Rule Goes to Son, 6. Reports on 5-day Illness Conflict", United
Press dispatch in a cutting from an unknown newspaper in the collection of
historian James L. Cabot, Ludington, Michigan.
12. Jump up^ Wily Fox: How King Boris Saved the Jews of Bulgaria from the Clutches of His
Axis Allie Adolph Hitler, AuthorHouse 2008, 213
Bibliography
Bulgaria in the Second World War by Marshall Lee Miller, Stanford University Press, 1975.
Boris III of Bulgaria 18941943, by Pashanko Dimitroff, London, 1986, ISBN 0-86332-140-
2
Crown of Thorns by Stephane Groueff, Lanham MD., and London, 1987, ISBN 0-8191-
5778-3
The Betrayal of Bulgaria by Gregory Lauder-Frost, Monarchist League Policy Paper,
London, 1989.
The Daily Telegraph, Obituary for "HM Queen Ioanna of the Bulgarians", London, 28
February 2000.
Balkans into Southeastern Europe by John R. Lampe, Palgrave Macmillan, New York,
2006.
A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time by Howard M. Sachar, Alfred A.
Knopf, New York, 2007, ISBN 978-0-394-48564-5