Today Pegman ventures to the Balkans to spend some time in Bulgaria. Feel free to use the prompt to inspire you in any way you see fit, be it historical fiction, poetry, a personal narrative, fantasy or whatever you like. The only requirement is to keep your post to 150 words or less as a gesture of respect for your readers.

Today, thanks to J Hardy Carroll and K Rawson, I’ve learned another bit of WWII Jewish history I didn’t know.

Genre: Historical Fiction

Word Count: 150

RIGHTEOUS AMONG NATIONS

            My grandmother and I strolled beside the spring, arm in arm. We’d had a picnic, just the two of us, to celebrate her 80^th birthday and my 13^th.

            “I wish my Papa could’ve been here to enjoy your Bar Mitzvah. He was a rabbi, you know.”

            “I know, Nana.”  

            “So I’ve told you.”

            With her intense dark eyes she could take you captive until she decided to let you go. I didn’t mind.

            Tears trickled down her weathered cheeks. “They closed the Jewish schools. We wore yellow stars. March 9, 1943, my 13th^th birthday. They rounded us up like cattle. We waited to be deported. It was inevitable. I would never see my beloved papa again. He held me and wept like a child. Then the miracle happened—”

            “At the last minute Dimitar Peshev, the Vice President of the Bulgarian Parliament, got the order reversed.”

            “So I’ve told you.”

 

From Wikipedia, After the war, the Communists brought forth charges on the Old Bulgarian Parliament for collaboration with the Germans. Peshev was tried for being both an anti-Semite and anti-Communist and was even accused of having been bribed by the Jews in exchange for halting the deportation.^[2] However, his Jewish friends from the Kyustendil delegation, led by Joseph Nissim Yasharoff, testified on his behalf and saved him from a death sentence. He was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment but was released after one year.