Language:
English
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
East European Jewish Affairs
Angaben zur Quelle:
26,2 (1996) 53-66
Keywords:
Jews History 1800-2000
Abstract:
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 was conceived as a crusade to drive the Turks out of Europe; it was accompanied by atrocities against the Bulgarian Jews on the part of both the invading Russian army (comprised largely of Cossacks) and collaborating Bulgarians. The Russians regarded the Jews as a hostile, pro-Turkish element. They also mistakenly applied the paradigm of Christian-Jewish relations in the Russian Pale of Settlement to Bulgaria. The pogroms were omitted from both Russian and Bulgarian histories of the war, and they were neglected by public opinion in the West, but not by the Jews. The atrocities against the Jews caused Western Jewry to revise its image of the Ottoman Empire as an "Asiatic barbar" and that of the Slavs as a civilized power. They left a deep scar in subsequent Jewish-Bulgarian relations - despite the fact that Bulgaria rescued its Jews during the Holocaust, the great majority of the latter left the country after the Second World War.
DOI:
10.1080/13501679608577830
URL:
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