Dimitar Peshev

Dimitar Yosifov Peshev was born in Kyustendil, southwestern Bulgaria. After studying law at Sofia University and serving as an officer in World War I, Peshev became a respected judge, attorney, and in 1935 Minister of Justice. Elected Deputy Speaker of the Bulgarian National Assembly (Sobraniye) in 1940 as part of the pro-government majority aligned with the Axis powers, Peshev initially supported foreign alliances to secure Bulgarian territorial claims.

In early March 1943, a delegation of terrified Jewish friends from Kyustendil visited Peshev in Sofia, revealing that sealed freight cars were waiting at railway stations and secret orders had been signed by the Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, Aleksander Belev, to deport 48,000 Bulgarian Jews to Treblinka. Deeply outraged by the clandestine betrayal of fellow Bulgarian citizens, Peshev immediately stormed into the office of Interior Minister Petar Gabrovski, confronting him forcefully and refusing to leave until Gabrovski telephoned regional governors to suspend the deportation trains.

To make the cancellation irreversible, Peshev drafted a fiery protest manifesto condemning racial persecution as an irreparable stain on Bulgarian honor and morality. Defying Prime Minister Bogdan Filov and German diplomatic fury, Peshev rallied forty-two fellow members of parliament to sign the petition. While the government retaliated by stripping Peshev of his Deputy Speakership and censuring him, his defiance broke the veil of secrecy and rallied the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and Tsar Boris III, resulting in the permanent cancellation of deportations and saving every single Bulgarian Jew.