Book Review: How Bulgarian citizens rescued 50,000 Jews in 1943

(JNS) — Among all the tales of heroism and death during the Holocaust, how many of us are aware of the rescue of nearly 50,000 Jews by the citizens of Bulgaria? In 1943, despite the planned and already commenced deportation of Bulgarian Jews to the Nazi death camps, thousands were released from the trains bound for Auschwitz and allowed to go home.

The newly released “Acts of Resistance” by Dominic Carrillo is a fictionalized account of the actions of Bulgarian citizens that succeeded in stopping the deportations. The novel’s narrative is based on memoirs written soon after World War II and th...