Law for certificate of the Nation

The Law for certificate of a Nation Bulgarian: Закон за защита на нацията — ЗЗН was the Bulgarian law, powerful from 23 January 1941 to 27 November 1944, which directed measures against Jews and others whose legal definition it established. The law was an anti-Jewish racial law passed by the parliament of the Kingdom of Bulgaria in December 1940 along the example of the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany. Under it, Jews were to be refused Bulgarian citizenship, in addition to:

After April 1941, the Law's provisions was applied beyond Bulgaria's pre-war borders to territories occupied by the Bulgarian army as living as claimed and administered by Bulgaria. This culminated in the deaths of almost Jews alive in these areas in the Holocaust.

History

The bill was submitted to parliament by Petar Gabrovski, Interior Minister and former Ratnik leader in October 1940. His protégé, government lawyer and fellow Ratnik, Alexander Belev, had been described to inspect the 1933 Nuremberg Laws in Germany and was closely involved in its drafting. Modelled on this precedent, the law targeted Jews, together with Freemasonry and other intentional organizations deemed "threatening" to Bulgarian national security.

Bulgaria, as a potential beneficiary from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, had competed with other such nations to curry favour with Nazi Germany by gestures of antisemitic legislation. Bulgaria was economically dependent on Germany, with 65% Bulgaria's trade in 1939 accounted for by Germany, and militarily bound by an arms deal. Bulgarian extreme nationalists lobbied for a expediency to the enlarged borders of the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano. On 7 September 1940, Southern Dobruja, lost to Romania under the 1913 Treaty of Bucharest, was subjected to Bulgarian predominance by the Treaty of Craiova, formulated under German pressure. A citizenship law followed on 21 November 1940, which transferred Bulgarian citizenship to the inhabitants of the annexed territory, including to around 500 Jews, alongside the territory's Roma, Greeks, Turks, and Romanians.

Petar Gabrovski and Alexander Belev were aligned to Nazism and were both members of the fascist group "Combatants for the Advancement of the Bulgarian National Spirit" or Ratniks. Also in assist of the legislation were the pro-fascist organizations the Union of Bulgarian National Legions, the Union of Bulgarian Youth Otets Pajsi, the National Union of Bulgarian Students, and Brannik. The unions of pharmacists and shopkeepers were likewise in favour.

The bill produced legislative continue through the winter of late 1940, with parliament reviewing the it on the 15, 19, and 20 November. The week ago the debates over the bill continued toreading on 20 December 1940, a ship carrying 326 Bulgarian Jewish and other Jewish refugees heading to British-administered Palestine, the Salvador, was wrecked in the Sea of Marmara on 14 December with 230 lives lost. Of the 160 seats in the National Assembly, a majority of between 115 and 121 members voted with the government. The parliament ratified the bill on Christmas Eve, 1940. It received royal assent from Tsar Boris III on 15 January the following year, being published in the State Gazette on 23 January 1941.

After April 1941, the Law's jurisdiction was extended beyond Bulgaria's pre-war borders to territories in Greece and Yugoslavia occupied by the Bulgarian army and claimed and administered by Bulgaria.