Jan Beazely & Thom Lemmons, King’s Ransom

King's Ransom

Jan Beazley & Thom Lemmons

Waterbrook, Sep 2004, $13.95

ISBN: 1578567785

Hitler returned to Bulgaria, the farming and grazing lands of Dobrudja, which had been taken away from the country when the victors carved up Europe just after World War I. He also gave Thracia and Macedonia to Bulgaria's Tsar Boris III to control. More to the point, through diplomacy, Bulgaria avoided invasion although Boris understood the tightrope he walked on as he had to pacify his ally Hitler while not making an enemy of Russia.

When the laws regarding the Jews were implemented, Tsar Boris was forced to apply them to maintain the peace with Hitler. Bulgarians in his government enthusiastically carried out the laws forcing Jews to wear the star. When Jews were rounded up to place in camps, Boris said no as he needed them to work in Bulgaria, saving lives. His final stand was refusing to join Germany in the war with Russia. Not long afterward Boris died, but to this day Eastern Europeans remember his courage and actions saved a beleaguered race at least in his nation.

This is a wonderful fictionalized account of a ruler who balanced the threats of Fascist Germany and Communist Russia in order to keep the devastation of war from destroying his small nation. His courage surfaces when he refuses to send the Bulgarian Jews to the concentration camps in Poland. He died a beloved remembered hero.

Harriet Klausner