Boris III of Bulgaria

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"Tsar Boris" redirects here. For the 1870 drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, see Tsar Boris (drama).

Boris III
Tsar of Bulgaria
Reign3 October 1918[1] – 28 August 1943
PredecessorFerdinand I
SuccessorSimeon II
Born(1894-01-30)30 January 1894
Prince's Palace, Sofia, Bulgaria
Died28 August 1943(1943-08-28) (aged 49)
Sofia, Bulgaria
Burial
Rila Monastery
Spouse
Catholic
SignatureBoris III's signature

Boris III (

Kingdom of Bulgaria
from 1918 until his death in 1943.

The eldest son of

absolute monarch
, with his prime ministers largely submitting to his will.

Following the outbreak of

Holocaust, Bulgarian authorities deported most Jews from occupied Greek and Yugoslav territories and transferred them to the German extermination camp of Treblinka. Under public pressure, Boris cancelled the deportation of Bulgarian Jews while expelling almost 20,000 Jews to the Bulgarian countryside to be deployed in forced labor camps. In 1942, Zveno, the Agrarian National Union, the Bulgarian Communist Party, and other far-left groups united to form a resistance movement known as the Fatherland Front, which went on to overthrow the government in 1944. In August 1943, shortly after returning from a visit to Germany, Boris died at the age of 49. His six-year-old son, Simeon II
, succeeded him as tsar.

Early life

Crown Prince Boris (2nd from right) and German field marshal Mackensen reviewing a Bulgarian regiment accompanied by the Commander in Chief General Zhekov and the Chief of Staff Army General Zhostov during World War I

Boris was born on 30 January 1894 in Sofia to Ferdinand I, Prince of Bulgaria, and his wife Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma.

In February 1896, his father paved the way for the reconciliation of Bulgaria and

Nicholas II of Russia stood as godfather to Boris and later 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 had founded in 1908 solely for his sons. Later, Boris graduated from the Military School in

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.[2] In 1918, Boris was made a major general
.

Early reign

King Boris' manifesto of ascension to the throne
The Royal Sceptre of Boris III

In September 1918, Bulgaria was defeated in the

Vardar Offensive and forced to sue for peace
. Ferdinand abdicated in favour of Boris, who became Tsar on 3 October 1918.

A year after Boris's accession,

Saint Nedelya Church terror 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 the Petrich Incident, which was resolved with the help of the League of Nations.

Boris III of Bulgaria and Prime-minister Kimon Georgiev
during the opening session of the IV International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Sofia, 9 September 1934)

In the

coup on 19 May 1934, the Zveno military organisation established a dictatorship, abolished political parties, and reduced Boris to a puppet figurehead.[3] The following year, he staged a counter-coup and retook control of the country. The political process was controlled by the Tsar, but a semi-parliamentary system was re-introduced without restoration of political parties.[4]

With the rise of the "King's government" in 1935, Bulgaria entered an era of prosperity and astounding growth, which deservedly qualifies it as the Golden Age of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom. It lasted nearly five years.[5] According to Reuben H. Markham, former Balkan correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, writing in 1941, "As a ruler, Boris is competent; as a citizen exemplary; as a personality inspiring.... His country is to a large extent indebted to him for the comparatively favorable situation it has held in the Balkans, during the last two decades."[6] Markham added, "King Boris is very accessible. He constantly comes into contact with persons of every sort. He drives his car up and down the country with no special guards and often stops to converse with peasants, workers or children. He gives lifts to the humblest pedestrians. Rare is the Bulgarian township that does not boast of at least one person who has ridden with the King." "He is without question one of the best kings in Europe."[7]

During a visit to the United Kingdom in 1937, Boris made international news for taking the throttle of a London Midland Scotland Railway Coronation Class steam locomotive.[8]

Marriage and issue

Boris married

Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, and as he remained Orthodox, it was a Catholic nuptial ceremony outside of Mass. It was held at the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi in Assisi, Italy, on 25 October 1930.[9] Benito Mussolini registered the marriage at the town hall immediately after the liturgy.[10]

Their marriage produced two children: a daughter,

Simeon
, on 16 June 1937.

Second World War

Adolf Hitler receives King Boris III of Bulgaria at his headquarters, 25 April 1941.

In the early days of the

Treaty of Neuilly), Bulgaria, which had fought on the losing side, lost two important territories to neighboring countries: the Southern plain of Dobruja to Romania, and Western 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 Tsar Boris III's allegiance. In the summer of 1940, after a year of war, Hitler hosted diplomatic talks between Bulgaria and Romania in Vienna. On 7 September, an agreement was signed for the return of Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria. The Bulgarian nation rejoiced. In March 1941, Boris allied himself with the Axis powers, thus recovering most of Macedonia and Aegean Thrace, as well as protecting his country from being crushed by the German Wehrmacht like neighboring Yugoslavia and Greece. For recovering these territories, Tsar Boris was called the Unifier (Bulgarian: Цар Обединител). Tsar Boris appeared on the cover of Time on 20 January 1941 wearing a full military uniform.[11][12]

Despite this alliance, and the German presence in Sofia and along the railway line which passed through the Bulgarian capital to Greece, Boris was not willing to provide full and unconditional cooperation with Germany. He refused to send regular Bulgarian troops to fight the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front alongside Germany and the other Axis belligerents, and also refused to allow unofficial volunteers (such as Spain's Blue Division) to participate, although the German legation in Sofia received 1,500 requests from young Bulgarian men who wanted to fight against Bolshevism.[13]

But there was a price to be paid for the return of Dobrudja. This was the adoption of the anti-Jewish "

Petur Gabrovski, both Nazi sympathisers, 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.[citation needed
]

The Holocaust

Decree of Boris III for approval of the antisemitic Law for Protection of the Nation

In early 1943, Hitler's emissary,

Bulgarian Jews were to be deported later.[citation needed
]

The initial roundups began on 9 March 1943, during that month, Bulgarian military and police authorities deported 11,343 Jews from the Bulgarian-occupied regions of

Treblinka.[14]

Boxcars were lined up in

Majdanek.[14]

The King has declared that up to now he has only given his consent for deportation of Jews from Macedonia and Thrace to areas in Eastern Europe. He only wants to deport a limited number of Bolsheviks-Communists from Bulgaria itself. The other 25,000 Jews will be concentrated in camps within the country.

— A telegram from Germany's foreign minister Von Ribbentrop indicates the readiness of King Boris to hand over half of the Jewish population. 4 April 1943., [15]

Still reluctant to comply with the German deportation request, the royal palace used Swiss diplomatic channels to inquire whether it was possible to deport the Jews to British-controlled Palestine by ship rather than to concentration camps in German-occupied Poland by boat and train.[citation needed] This was blocked by the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden.[16]

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 Tsar Boris, Monsignor Angelo Roncalli (the future Pope John XXIII), the Papal Nuncio in Istanbul. 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 Tsar 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."[17]

Meetings with Hitler

Boris III Tsar of Bulgaria, sculptor Kunyo Novachev, architect Milomir Boganov. It is the first statue of the Tsar. Since 2016 it has been displayed in the central open area of the National Historical Museum of Bulgaria in Sofia
Dobrich downtown – square "Tsar Boris III Unifier". Memorial metalwork "Tsar Boris III Unifier" on the City hall from 1992 in memory of thanks for the liberation of Southern Dobrudzha in 1940 and its return to Bulgaria.

Nazi pressure on Tsar Boris III continued for the deportation of the Bulgarian Jewry. At the end of March, Hitler "invited" the Tsar to visit him. Upon returning home, Boris ordered able-bodied Jewish men to join hard labor units to build roads within the interior of his kingdom. Some claim that this was the Tsar's attempt to avoid deporting them.[18]

During May 1943, Dannecker and Belev, the Commissar for Jewish Affairs, planned the deportation of more than 48,000 Bulgarian Jews, who were to be loaded on steamers on the

Bulgarian Jews were 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's deputy speaker Dimitar Peshev[19] and the head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Stefan, was organised. Following this campaign, Boris refused to permit the extradition of Bulgaria's nearly 50,000 Jews.[20]

On 30 June 1943, Apostolic Delegate Angelo Roncalli, the future

Jewish people." He wrote that Tsar Boris should on no account agree to the dishonorable action that Hitler was demanding. On the copy of the letter, the future pope noted, by hand, that the Tsar replied verbally to his message. The note states "Il Re ha fatto qualche cosa" ("The Tsar did something"); and while noting the difficult situation of the monarch, Roncalli stressed once again "Però, ripeto, ha fatto" ("But I repeat, he has acted").[17]

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 tsar. When I went to see Bishop Stephen, he said: "Tell your people, the Tsar 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 ..."[17]

Most irritating for Hitler was the Tsar's refusal to declare war on the

US Army Air Force and the British Royal Air Force in 1943 and 1944. (The bombardment of Bulgarian cities was started by the British Royal Air Force
in April 1941 without declaring a war.)

Bulgaria's opposition came to a head at this last official meeting between Hitler and Boris. Reports of the meeting indicate that Hitler was furious with the Tsar for refusing either to join the war against the USSR or to deport the Jews within his kingdom.[21] At the end of the meeting, it was agreed that "the Bulgarian Jews were not to be deported, for Tsar Boris had insisted that the Jews were needed for various laboring tasks including road maintenance."[citation needed]

Death

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, at approximately 16:22.

better source needed
]

Rumors of the death of Boris III indicate that the Tsar was poisoned by an order of Hitler, who was greatly irritated after his last meeting with the Bulgarian ruler because of his refusal to hand over the Bulgarian Jews and send troops against the USSR.[24] According to the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Bogdan Filov, however, in their last meeting, Hitler and Boris III discussed only the sending of additional Bulgarian troops to the Western Balkans, but not against the USSR.[25]

His son Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha did not deny this version, but pointed out as probable the hypothesis that the USSR was also interested in the Tsar's death, in which case the NKVD intervened.[26][27] Princess Marie Louise of Bulgaria stated in an interview that there was no definite version of what had happened, but that she was convinced that her father had not been poisoned by the Nazis or the British, but by the East.[28] Meanwhile, the American news reports stated that Hitler tried to hit him and the Tsar suffered a heart attack at the meeting; the latter died three weeks later.[29]

In his personal diary,

King Victor Emmanuel III
.

Boris was succeeded by his six-year-old son

Prince Kiril of Bulgaria
.

The grave of Tsar Boris III in the Rila Monastery

Following a large, 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 Vrana Palace, near Sofia. At a later time, the Communist authorities moved the zinc coffin from Vrana to a secret location, which remains unknown to this day. After the fall of communism, an excavation was made at Vrana Palace. 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 1994 to Rila Monastery, where it was reinterred.[citation needed
]

A wood carving is placed on the left side of his grave in Rila Monastery, made on 10 October 1943 by inhabitants of the village of Osoj, Debar district. The carving bears the following inscription:

To its Tsar Liberator Boris III, from grateful Macedonia.

Marriage and issue

In 1930 Boris married the Italian Princess Giovanna of Savoy, who became Queen of Bulgaria under the name "Joanna". They had two children, a daughter and a son:

Honours

National

Foreign

Arms


Arms of Boris as Prince of Tarnovo (1894–1918)
Arms of Boris III as Sovereign of Bulgaria (1929–1943)

Patronages

National patronages

Foreign patronages

Tributes

The Los Angeles Times reported in 1994 that the Jewish National Fund's Medal of the Legion of Honor was being awarded posthumously to Tsar Boris III, "the first non-Jew to receive one of the Jewish community's highest honors".[61]

In 1996, Bulgarian Jews in the United States and the Jewish National Fund erected a monument in "The Bulgarian Forest" in Israel to honor Tsar Boris as a savior of Bulgarian Jews.[62] In July 2003, a public committee headed by Israeli Chief Justice Moshe Bejski decided to remove the memorial because Bulgaria had consented to the delivery of 11,343 Jews from occupied territory of Macedonia, Thrace and Pirot to the Germans.[63]

Borisova gradina, the largest park in Sofia and one of the city's biggest boulevards are named after him.

Ancestors

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Bulgarian: Негово Величество Борисъ III, по Божията милость и Народната воля, Царь на Българитѣ, Принцъ Саксъ-Кобургъ-Гота и Херцогъ Саксонски

References

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  7. ^ Markham, Reuben (1931). Meet Bulgaria. Sofia: Self published by author. p. 278.
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Bibliography
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Boris III of Bulgaria
Cadet branch of the House of Wettin
Born: 30 January 1894 Died: 28 August 1943
Regnal titles
Preceded by Tsar of Bulgaria
3 October 1918 – 28 August 1943 		Succeeded by
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