On March 9, 1943, a series of freight trains waited at Bulgaria's railway stations to pick up thousands of Jews and carry them to Treblinka. Four hours before the departure, following a dramatic showdown, the order was cancelled. Another attempt on May 24 failed as well. Many pro-fascist politicians, the heads of the Bulgarian church, a beautiful young heroine, the elite and the grassroots of the Bulgarian society, all led by King Boris III, joined in an effort to thwart the deportation of the Jews to the death camps. This ...
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On March 9, 1943, a series of freight trains waited at Bulgaria's railway stations to pick up thousands of Jews and carry them to Treblinka. Four hours before the departure, following a dramatic showdown, the order was cancelled. Another attempt on May 24 failed as well. Many pro-fascist politicians, the heads of the Bulgarian church, a beautiful young heroine, the elite and the grassroots of the Bulgarian society, all led by King Boris III, joined in an effort to thwart the deportation of the Jews to the death camps. This brilliant book, the importance of which it would be hard to overstate, explains why. In The Fragility of Goodness one of Europe's great historians and moral philosophers brings together for the first time analysis and key texts to provide the definitive account of how Bulgaria's Jews survived the Holocaust when those in neighbouring countries were annihilated. It is also a searching investigation into the 'fragility of the goodness'. Todorov's conclusions are stark and important: he shows how the incidence of good depends on the particular and often chance union of political, economic, social and moral forces and how the slightest deviation from the path can jeopardize everything. Furthermore, once evil takes hold in society, it spreads easily, while good remains difficult, elusive and fragile.
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Seller's Description:
First U.k. Edition. Hardback. Dust Jacket. 8vo. pp 197. Original publisher's brown cloth, lettered gilt at the spine. The publisher's own retained copy with their stamp on the title page. The untold and uplifting story of a whole nation of Oskar Schindlers. ISBN: 0297646702 Fine in fine dust jacket.
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Fair. Connecting readers with great books since 1972. Used textbooks may not include companion materials such as access codes, etc. May have condition issues including wear and notes/highlighting. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
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Good. No dust jacket issued. [6], 190 pages. Footnotes. Sequence of Events. Documents: Exclusion. Documents: Deportation. Documents: Internment. Memoirs. Translator's Note. Bibliographic Note. Ink word on spine. Tzvetan Todorov (1 March 1939-7 February 2017) was a Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist. He was the author of many books and essays, which have had a significant influence in anthropology, sociology, semiotics, literary theory, intellectual history and culture theory. Todorov's historical interests have focused on such crucial issues as the conquest of The Americas and the German Nazi concentration camps. Aside from his work in literary theory, Todorov has also published studies of philosophy. He wrote Frail Happiness about the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He focuses on Rousseau's ideas of attaining human happiness and how we can live in 'modern' times. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: At the outbreak of WWII, Bulgaria, an ally of Germany, issued anti-Semitic legislation that allowed for the deportation of 11, 343 Jews from the provinces of Thrace and Macedonia; all but 12 of them died in concentration camps. This action was met with such outrage on the part of Jews and non-Jews, including many political insiders and the Orthodox Church, that the legislation was rescinded and no other Bulgarian Jews were sent to certain death. Although the government appeased Germany by claiming that this measure was merely temporary, shortly thereafter, Bulgaria fell to the Soviet Union, and its remaining Jews, nearly 50, 000 strong, were spared. A French intellectual with Bulgarian roots, Tzvetan Todorov explores the tenuous combination of circumstances that saved Bulgaria's Jews.
