March 10, 2009

The commemoration will take place on February 10, 2009 in front of the Memorial plaque near the National Assembly, honoring this historic event.

The date of March 10th is declared “Holocaust and Victims of Crimes against Humanity Remembrance Day” by Bulgarian Council of Ministers’ Decision of January 13, 2003. On this day, in 1943 the Bishop of the town of Plovdiv, Cyril,who became later Bulgarian Orthodox Church Patriarch and the Exarch of Sofia Stefan prevented the deportation of thousands of Jews from the town of Plovdiv. On March 17, 1943, the than Deputy Speaker of the Bulgarian National Assembly, Dimitar Peshev had written a letter supported by 42 deputies against the deportation of Bulgarian Jews.

In February 2009 parliamentary members from around the world launched an Inter- parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism in London (ICCA). They adopted a Declaration urging parliamentary members from all over the world to reveal, confront and isolate politicians who instigate hatred towards Jews and to adopt effective legislation against crimes aimed at “hatreds propagation”.

Bulgarian MPs, members of the National Assembly’s Delegation to the Inter-parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, took part in February 2009, in the International Conference at Bethlehem dedicated to” The role of traditional religions in the search of peaceful solutions and responses to the challenges posed by the global and regional conflicts and threats”. The forum adopted an official statement proclaiming the urgent necessity for the contemporary nations to adopt common values in order to be able to maintain peaceful coexistence, despite the differences in their ways of life, religion and culture.