Документи [Documents, ] edited by Natan Grinberg. Sofia: консистория на евреитѣ въ България [The Jewish Consistory of Bulgaria]: 1945. Bulgarian.

First documentation of official records and papers of the Holocaust in Thrace, Macedonia, and Pirot. Some evidence of the systematic extermination of Jews by the Nazis already surfaced during World War II, but official documentation, originating from the bureaucratic organization of the perpetrators themselves, was scarce. The present booklet is among the first publications of such documents, directly relating to Nazi efforts to exterminate European Jewry.

The booklet comprises re-prints of official Bulgarian documents, related to the deportation of Jews from territories taken from Greece and Yugoslavia, and granted to Bulgaria by the Germans: Thrace, Macedonia, and the Serbian city Pirot. The approx. 80 documents include orders and instructions of deportation, various reports, logistical plans, financial matters related to the operation, and more, all originating from the bureaucratic mechanism of the fascist Bulgarian regime. Several black and white pictures taken during the deportations are printed at the end of the booklet.
The documents were collected by the Natan Grinberg (1903-1988), a Jewish businessman, who during the war was employed by the Bulgarian "Commissariat for Jewish Questions", established to implement anti-Jewish legislation. The present booklet was printed in early 1945 (presumably, it was hastily prepared to be used in the trial against fascist war criminals, held in the Bulgarian People's Court after the war; the present copy's cover is marked with inked stamps and postage stamps from March, 1945.)
After its publication, the booklet did not receive much attention, and was not re-printed until 2015 (one of the reason being that the evidence it contains did not serve Bulgaria's image as protector of its Jews, and could potentially hamper its efforts to evade paying reparations to victims.)

The Holocaust in Thrace, Macedonia, and Pirot
In 1941, the Bulgarian parliament passed the antisemitic "Law for the Protection of the Nation, " which was intended to ostracize Bulgarian Jews from public life, thus promoting a solution to the "Jewish problem." The racial laws included numerus clausus in the universities, expulsion of Jews from public service, a requirement that Jews wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes, various fines, expulsion from larger cities, confiscation of property, forced labor, and imprisonment in concentration camps.
In March 1941 the Kingdom of Bulgaria, led by Boris III and the antisemitic royalist, prime minister Bogdan Filov, had joined the "Tripartite Pact" (a military alliance originally signed between Germany, Italy and Japan.) As part of the pact, Bulgaria agreed to provide support for the Axis powers, but avoided a direct involvement in the war. In return, entering the pact had enabled the regime to capture territories conceived by Bulgarian nationalists as an inseparable part of "Greater Bulgaria."
Jews of these regions did not become Bulgarian citizens, and did not enjoy any legal protections. In 1943 the Germans demanded that Bulgaria send a "quota" of 20,000 Jews to extermination camps. In accordance with the demand, the "Commissariat for Jewish Affairs" organized the deportation of more than 11,000 stateless Jews from the newly acquired regions, to the death camp Treblinka.
The deportation was carried out by the Bulgarian military and police forces, and was financed with money and property robbed from the deportees themselves; according to Gideon Hausner, head prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, Bulgaria was "the only country that signed a written contract 'to supply Jews to Germany, ' undertook to pay for their transport, and stipulated that she would never and under no circumstances request their return."

96, 96-I-96VI, 97-200 pp., 23 cm. With printed errata. Good-fair condition. Stains. Closed and open tears to corners and edges of cover and several leaves. Back cover detached. Open tears to spine. Handwritten inscriptions, postage stamps and inked stamps to cover.