Free The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan Page A

endorsed the alliance with the Nazis, a man who had voted in favor of harsh restrictions against the nation's Jews—faced a choice. It was, perhaps, the most important moment in the complex and fragile narrative that would mark Bulgaria's history as forever distinct from the rest of Europe's.
    "I could not remain passive," Dimitur Peshev decided. "My conscience and understanding of the grave consequences both for the people involved and for my country did not allow it. It was then I made the decision to do everything in my power to prevent the execution of a plan that was going to compromise Bulgaria in the eyes of the world and brand it with a mark of shame that it did not deserve."
    Peshev told the men to meet him at his office in the parliament that afternoon at 3:00 P.M. It was imperative to try to meet with the prime minister.
    The men met again that afternoon in the parliament building. The prime minister, however, refused to see Peshev and the Kyustendil delegation. The deportation order remained in place. It was now late on the afternoon of March 9; the hour for the deportations was growing closer. With few options left, Peshev played his strongest remaining card. He demanded a meeting with the interior minister, Petur Gabrovski.
    Within minutes, Peshev, Suichmezov, and eight other men—including fellow members of Parliament and, according to some accounts, several Jewish leaders in Sofia—strode into Gabrovski's office. The men confronted the minister with the scenes from Kyustendil. Gabrovski denied knowledge of what they knew to be true. Peshev, however, would recall that the interior minister seemed tense and nervous. The men pressed him, and again Gabrovski denied any knowledge of the deportations. At that point, someone in the delegation asked about the Dannecker-Belev Agreement—the German-Bulgarian document that laid out the secret plans in detail, down to the train wagons and deportation centers. How, the men wanted to know, could the interior minister not know about that?
    Gabrovski lay trapped by his own denials. Either he didn't know what was happening in his own ministry or, far more likely, he was lying. Or, Peshev would charitably recount, "he was speaking in the kinds of platitudes one might use to extricate oneself from an awkward situation. . . ."
    It was late afternoon. In just over an hour, the parliament would convene an evening session. Peshev and his fellow MPs in the meeting had made it clear they were prepared to use the session to denounce the secret deportations; if that happened, a national scandal would erupt. This was a crucial difference between Nazi-occupied countries elsewhere in Europe and the quasi-sovereign Axis nation of Bulgaria: There was still some room to maneuver. Dissenters in Bulgaria would not be shot on sight.
    Peshev and the others waited for a response from the interior minister. Finally, Gabrovski stood up and left the room—perhaps to speak to the prime minister. When he returned he announced that the deportation order could not be revoked but that its execution could be suspended—temporarily. Peshev called Miltenov, the Kyustendil governor, and told him of the suspension. Other representatives began calling their home districts to repeat the news, while pressing Gabrovski to make his own official calls. The interior minister ordered his secretary to telegram each Bulgarian city where the deportation orders were active.
    Evidence would later suggest that King Boris approved the suspensions. A document from the Gestapo official in Sofia to German authorities in Berlin attributed the decision to suspend the deportations to "the highest level." Yet Gabrovski—and therefore, perhaps, Boris—insisted the suspension would be only temporary. Boris was adamant that the orders for the 11,300 Jews of the "new lands" of Macedonia and Thrace would not be affected. Their deportation would continue. While the king apparently agreed, at least temporarily, to give Bulgaria's