In discussing the comparative disadvantages for the US losing old friends (France) and acquiring new ones (Bulgaria) while dealing with Iraq, Maureen Dowd, in her funny op-ed on "Bush's Warsaw War Pact" (NYTimes 2/26/03), calls the Bulgarians some names - the Bulgarians, who tried to outdo the bizarro Albanians as the most Stalinist regime in Eastern Europe and were renowned for the thick necks who did wet work for the K.G.B. etc. etc., and asks whether this a good trade, the French for the Bulgarians, just to form a pro-war-against-Iraq coalition?

It certainly is a good trade - not only because there is nothing wrong with Bulgarian virtues (as some NY Times readers correctly noted, the French surrendered their Jews to the Nazis and the Bulgarians saved theirs); not only because the computer that Maureen used in compiling her funny little arrogant piece was invented by one John Atanasoff, who proudly called himself a Bulgarian; not only because the Bulgarians are better soldiers than the French, and not only because a former Warsaw Pact membership is an impressive credential for a present NATO one, but also because the US desperately needs allies, whatever is officially said to the contrary.

The question is, even if the Americans like that trade, would the Bulgarians?

Let's see what America's attitude to the Jews was at the very same time while the Bulgarians were saving their Jews during WW II.

Have a look at www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/reference/primary/,
and you will see that while the Bulgarians were saving their Jews, the USA was barring its doors to all aliens and refugees, mostly Jews at that time, and was doing so very consistently and deliberately, despite the fact that the news of the extermination had reached the U.S.

The Memorandum of Conversation by Mr. Harry L. Hopkins, Special Assistant to President Roosevelt regarding a meeting with Anthony Eden on March 27, 1943, is especially poignant - you will see that ?four months after the State Department confirmed the dimensions of the Holocaust, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden met in Washington with President Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. At this meeting, Eden expressed his fear that Hitler might actually accept an offer from the Allies to move Jews out of areas under German control and ?no one present objected to Eden's statement.

Eden mentioned that the British could ship some 60 000 Jews from Bulgaria to Palestine, adding that ships were scarce and there was fear that Polish and German Jews might want the same treatment.

Thank God the Bulgarians saved their Jews themselves and did not rely on the US, on the British or on their own pro-Hitler government. By the way, when the Bulgarian captain of the MS Struma requested British visas for Palestine for the 780 Romanian Jews who tried to escape from fascist Romania, the British Consul in Istanbul refused, on instructions from London, and all the refugees but one drowned in the Black Sea off Turkey in February 1942 ... so much for British promises to ship Jews to Palestine.

Now, I do not mean to say that US, GB and France kept on behaving like that. They did not. This is just an example that even the greatest of democracies can at times stand corrected and morally lacking, and the more one reads about Bulgaria and the Holocaust, the more one thinks that both the US and the British, let alone the French, should take pride to be in Bulgaria's company...

Former US ambassador to Bulgaria Avis Bohlen, quoted in Maureen's op-ed, is correct in saying that the Bulgarians are , but let me mention that they are very good at languages, too. Noone doubts Maureen's hunch that President Bush will have trouble with the Bulgarain prime minister's name. For obvious reasons. I mean, the name of Prime minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha is really not very common. On the other hand, the Prime minister, being fluent in Bulgarian, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Portugese and Arabic, will not have trouble with Mr. Bush's name - no nuclear science, after all...

The world is a big and old place, it is bigger and older than what Maureen Dowd might think, and she is doing a bad service to her excellent country and excellent compatriots by making them ask once again, because of her arrogant language, that eternal question: ...

Jason Hagadis Brazavashian,

A US-residing Congolese-born Armenian to Belgian-born parents, whose ancestors found shelter and refuge in Bulgaria in 1907.

Washington, D.C.
USA

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