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Hello, welcome to the new books in Jewish Studies podcast. I am your host, Ari Barblett. Today I'm blessed to be in dialogue with Boyan Alexov. We'll be discussing his newly published book, Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933 to 1945, published in Leiden, Netherlands by Brill, 2023.
Boyan Alexov is associate professor in South East European history at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. Boyan, it's an honor to be in communication with you today. Thank you very much, Ari. Thank you for inviting me.
To begin, please tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up? What formative events in your life inspired the scholar you become as an adult? I was born then.
I grew up in Belgrade, which was the capital of Yugoslavia back then. I was very unfortunate to find myself during my compulsory military service. When the war in former Yugoslavia began in 1991 and I deserted from the Yugoslavia and I became an anti-war activist and I spent most of 1990s helping others and other deserters and consensors, objectors and basically campaigning against the war and got myself in all sorts of troubles because of that. That was probably the most important event or series of events that formed me as a future scholar.
So while in anti-war activism I also studied history and then I was fortunate to get the scholarship to continue my studies, to do my graduate studies at the Central European University in Budapest and then I also studied at the Free University of Berlin and I also got the Plus graduate degree at the European University Institute in Florence. Since 2007 I am teaching Balkan history in London at the University College London, as you said, in its department for sub-armic and East European studies. Previously I published and researched a lot on mostly on small people's and religious dissenters, religious sects in 19th, 20th century, Serbia, Hungary. I edited a book on big powers and small East European states in the interval period.
And it is only in the last few years that I became engulfed in this project for which you invited me to talk. But basically my background and expertise is in Balkan history. What inspired you to write this book? What message do you hope to convey to readers?
Maybe better to ask who first inspired me. Yes, it was an elderly gentleman who I randomly encountered, not so randomly, he came to one of my talks and then came up to me after the talk and I learned about him and his life. His name was Imraerajlitz and he was a young boy in Vienna at the time of Anschluss in 1938. And he told me how he traveled on his own and fled to Yugoslavia only and was helped by a prominent Judas Dinsagreb, Dr.
Lavoslav Shik, another lawyer and spent two years in Zagreb in high school before the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941 and in September that he was among the first Jews from Zagreb or the Stila Minor in a refugee. He was deported to notorious concentration camp in Croatia, and by Croatian fascist Ustasas. The Asenovat camp were around 100,000 mostly Serbs but also Jews and Roma were brutally murdered. Now, Imra was unfortunate to be in the Fruz group of those deported but he was also fortunate that his uncle who stayed back in Zagreb was a first World War veteran and a friend of the civil envoy, Nazi civil envoy to Croatia, Blaise von Hostenau, also a first World War veteran who intervened on Imraerajl's behalf and after a couple of months of hell that Imraer later described in his book, Imraer was released.
So in those early days this was possible and then he fled to Darmyshak, which was partly an ex-partly occupied by Fascist Italy and there were many gracian but also Yugoslav and many foreign refugees found safety. Unfortunately, his mother stayed behind and was later murdered and so was his uncle and aunt when in 43 they had to, after Italy's capitulation, they had to flee for safety and join Yugoslav anti-fascist communist-led partisans. And in early 19, Imraer, because of his high school education, became the manager of the only citizen, later in early hospital for the next two years, made a career in partisan ranks only to flee because of his political disagreements with Communist partisans to flee to Italy in 45 and only later in his life Imraer, together with his son Joseph traveled back to what was there in Yugoslavia to research and explore and contextualize his trajectory and he published a book and I was delighted to get a book from an outsider so to say on the second World War in former Yugoslavia. So I frequently invited Imraer to talk to my students in London and I learned so to say about the topic, but I wasn't moved to begin my own research until Imraer's death, which strangely coincided with another refugee, Exodus, namely the Exodus of Syrian refugees in 2015, who also in the thousands and hundreds of thousands covers the Balkans on their way to Western Europe.
And there was lots of negative press about the Balkans and its poorest borders at the time, and I began to connect the two events, the one told about by Imraer and current or back then, Exodus of Syrian refugees. So both groups were traversing the Balkans, now Balkan leaders have their own share of guilt and responsibility for wars in violence in the Balkans, but speaking about these two refugee exoduses, Balkans share absolutely no responsibility and so this was what was similar, but what was different was back then in 1930s, thousands of first German Jews later joined by Austria and take Polish Jews So from the capitals of European culture and civilizations from places like Berlin, Vienna, Prague and so on, had to flee and find rescue in what was perceived by the modernists of the Balkans and many indeed found shelter on Adriatic islands or in Balkan mountains with local peasants and as I said, communist led partisans during the war, and I was struck by that and I wanted to explore further what the scholarship wrote about it and I found very little and often also misguided or misinterpreted narrative of these events. So I decided to embark on my own research of these little known aspect of the Holocaust, namely the escape of tens of thousands of rice and later also Polish Jews to Yugoslavia, Greece and Albania from 1933 to 1941 when the Balkans was also invaded by Nazi Germany and Polish and Italy and then what happened to them under German and Italian occupation until 1945. What are the primary themes in your book?
What story does your book tell? Well, first of all, without much scholarship and literature on these senators or I was forced to look at the literature on the general literature on the exodus of German Jews, which is very well documented and in scholarship very well analyzed, but I was struck by these marginalization so to say of some of the escape routes, namely in the existing literature it seemed to be more relevant somehow if one escaped via Paris or Amsterdam then via Zagreb or Tirana in Albania. So the Holocaust studies of the Jewish history seem to replicate the marginalization of the Balkans and is the rest of historiography. Secondly, the context, the general political, economic, social, cultural context of these of these Balkan countries that I named was entirely different from the ones invested in Europe which were more written about so I was struck among the first sources that I found was Irish, well, who writes that Yugoslavs were the only ones that accepted us, they didn't shoot at us at the border, they were friendly.
So this was one of these so to say different contexts, so namely the book is divided into several chapters as the context and the situation changes, but for most of the 1930s, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece were either welcoming the Jewish refugees in contrast to other countries who were not welcoming them, all even when the bands were introduced, the Balkan borders remain porous, informality ruled, and it was simply possible to bribe the border officials or the right local policemen and so on, it was possible to bribe anyone back then in 1930s, and to escape the Nazi Terror and many found shelter and welcome, as I said, and this is one of the teams, and the other team is then what happens after 41 and that is best illustrated by the tragedy of the so-called transport and organized transport of refugees organized by Nazianist groups and Kugat stuck in Yugoslavia on the Danube and as such, they were captured by invading Nazi troops in 1941 and were slaughtered, were executed along Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, starting from early October 1941, in what was to be, let's say, the beginning, even if unofficial of the final solution or the final solution before the final solution, so yes, these refugees shared the tragic fate of Yugoslavia and Greece and Jews if they were captured, and this is yet another shocking revelation Despite this opening in the context of 1930s, the Philos Emitic attitude of Yugoslavia and Greece, their Jewish population would be exterminated to almost the highest percentage or the highest share of their population would be then during the occupation exterminated by Nazis and collaborators, so this is another topic that I cover, and then I cover a topic of Italian occupation and Italian attitude which was entirely different and most of survivors, thanks to these attitudes of Italian fascists towards Jews survived, and I have separate chapters on an island of four to another, almost thousand Jews who were rescued during this period, so I contrast the different systems of occupation and the different stories of different groups of refugees, and here I insist I follow mostly, and this is the greatest, greatest majority of refugees who fled on their own In the existing historiography, up till now, dealt mostly with those Jews who fled in an organized, even if illegal, as I said, with the help of Zionist organizations, but that was just a fraction of refugees, most refugees fled on their own who were with family members, and during these tumultuous years were on their own and faced a destiny on their own, and as such left very little record in the archives, and thus official historiography or Israeli historiography that dealt mostly with Zionist organized migration failed to cover their destiny, so this is these are my main topics What routes did Jewish refugees from Central Europe take to reached Balkans? Well, there were several waves of refugees, the first in 1933, where they were fleeing Germany, mostly because they were political opponents of Nazis, so there were people who lost their jobs in Nazi Germany because of their Jewish ethnicity or background, this then intensifies after the racial laws, 35, 36, and reaches its peak in 38 and 39 where there is a massive exodus from what was the largest of Jewish communities in the Reich named that of Vienna, after the Anschluss mentioned in 1938, and because of Austria's proximity to the Yugoslavia or the common border from 38, Yugoslavia will become the main destination of Jews fleeing from Vienna and then in the Nazi Germany, and after the Anschluss mentioned in 1938, and because of Austria's proximity to Yugoslavia or the common border from 38, Yugoslavia will become the main destination of Jews fleeing from Vienna and then they will be then joined in 1939 by Czech Jews and in 1940 a massive exodus from Polish Jews. Initially, as I said, they could travel legally up to 1938 or first the obstructions were introduced, but after that, so they traveled in all sorts of ways by plane, by plane, by car, some walked, some fled, a couple fled from Hamburg and cycling all the way from the Balkans to the Balkans. That all changed, as I said, in 38 and 39 when Yugoslavia also closes its borders and then most refugees had to flee illegally, and this is the time that 1939, early 41, at the time of dramatic rescues and escapes over the green border, over the Alps, in snow, in all sorts of weather organized by people's traffickers who connected with Nazis from the Nazis and who transported for fees, for huge fees, thousands of Jews to Yugoslavia.
Others came by Hungary and there were two situations worse and then reports of Jews traversing the river on boats or swimming, there would be dramatic rescues later for those who reached Greece and the ones who would escape similarly on boats from Dalmatia to mainland Italy during the war. So many of these stories are very reminiscent of current refugee stories, people trying in all sorts of ways to flee and lots of involvement of criminal networks. Yes, thank you. How did families who migrated to the Balkans adapt to their new locations?
Again, as I said, I am following non-organized flight, which probably accounts for 90, if not more, percents of all those who fled the Reich. This is a very heterogeneous group. Very few except some Austrian or Granz Jews had any connections to the Balkans, any family or business connections, nothing. They simply fled south because this was the only way.
After America introduced the quota systems and in the food and German Jews, this meant waiting for decades to reach the place on American quota systems. And after other countries like Britain, France, Switzerland was especially strict. And after all other countries introduced the banks, the Balkans was the only way out. So this was the only reason they found themselves in Yugoslavia and Greece or Albania.
So this was entirely a new world for them. Very few spoke the language. And for elderly among the refugees, asked me about the families, for parents, I'm speaking now about the period of 1930s. It was a difficult period of adaptation.
Whereas in my sources, I deal with lots of memoirs or interviews or respondents or reports by young refugees and many of them easily adapted to new environment. Many of them joined the local anti-fascist or communist led groups and became active in the new environment. And I am committed to say the only help coming was from local Jewish communities, namely Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo, which were the three cities in Yugoslavia that had the largest Jewish communities. And they were the only ones, there was no international humanitarian organizations back then.
And there was some little help coming from American Jewish organizations. But basically, it was the Yugoslav Jews who took many of these German refugees into their homes. But as I said, most of them had to bear the costs, their own costs by themselves or look for work or any work. And then after the Nazi invasion, 41, they were again on the run and then everything changes.
And again, the role of different generations is differently addressed in my book. So this is the answer to your question. Can you tell us about the Kladovo transport refugees? Who were they?
What we felt them? Yes. So this is the most famous, the most notorious, the most tragic case. But it is the best known and there is lots of literature on it.
And I mentioned it in passing in my book as I said, I deal with non-organised flight. Kladovo transport was a transport of organised by Austria-Vianese Zionist organizations in 1939, which in the winter of 39 to 40 only reached the Yugoslav Romanian border. And before the Danube froze, they couldn't sail further, so they had to spend the winter in the town of Kladovo on the banks of Danube. This is on the border between Yugoslavia and Romania.
And later on, Romania and Bulgaria forbid their passage and they had to spend long months. As I said, in this makeshift camp, and only in the fall of 1940, the Yugoslav authorities transferred them to the town of Shabbat, near Belgrade, where they were offered better conditions and more help from, as I said, Belgrade Jewish communities. And many other Jewish refugees who were on their own, Raujicoslavia joined that group in the hope that as a collective, they would escape more easily or more quickly from their predicament. At one point, they reached more than 1,300 while they were in Shabbat.
As I said, now joined by also Polish refugees and others. Before the Nazi invasion, only a group of cycling more than 200 young boys and girls received the so-called British mandate of Palestine certificates and were allowed to emigrate. And this happened literally days before the Nazi invasion, but over 1,000 of others remained in Shabbat. And this is where they were stuck when Nazi Germany invaded.
In the very summer, there was a massive anti-German anti-Nazi uprising in Serbia. And in order to suppress the uprising, the local German military authorities issued an order that 100 locals, 100 Serbs, or locals should be shut for every single killed German soldier and 50 for every wounded German soldier. And German army then began collecting hostages among the local population. And the first hostages were Jews, Serbian Jews, but also refugee Jews and all of Jews who were in the so-called Kladovol transport.
And the men among them were shot immediately in October 1941, whereas women and elderly and children were forced in winter in the freezing conditions to march 70 kilometers to Belgrade. Many of them died on this march, and others were joined by Serbian, women, Jewish women and children in the so-called Semlin. So-called Semlin, Lager, or Star of Symys, they were all fairground concentration camp in Belgrade. And in the winter in the spring, they were all gas.
In the so-called gas vans, which were specially designed to murder Jews and which were first used in Serbia before being deployed later to the Eastern Front. So this was the tragic ending of Kladovol transport refugees. What roles did Zionist organizations play in Jewish refugee migration in the Balkans? As I said that, they played a huge role.
They were the only organizations assisting the escape. And there was a lot to assist in terms of providing documents, providing financing, organizing exchanges of properties and so on, which is not my topic, and which was dealt. As I said by Israeli historiography. And there were various centers, various different groups, and there were lots of conflicts between two main groups of Zionist.
I don't want to go into this because my topic was the people who were not associated with any of these alliraptor, illegal immigration that was sponsored or organized by Zionist groups, but people who simply fled on their own. And whose experience was to a great extent different from those who escaped with the help of scientists. Who were the most famous and prominent Jewish refugees in the Balkans? Again, this is, as I said, it was a very, very heterogeneous group.
In 1923, among the first people were those who had lost their jobs. Among them, many university professors, one of the most famous was Professor Georgios Rogorski, who was famous, a Byzantologist, and who lost his job because of his Jewish origin at the University of Breslau today. And there were very few of those. In Waslavia was very poor, so it could get only very few of these prominent refugees who mostly went to Turkey, where Turkey stayed hired, lots of German Jewish professors to help establish universities in Turkey.
But apart from Professor Georgios Rogorski, there was also Professor Spedyn and Blumen Tal and Miss Loweetzer, who were employed founders of the ecological studies and institute in Belgrade. And there was lots of other doctors, and there was Professor Arthur Lieber, who started living the greatest Kantian. But these changes over years, and many other, especially Austrian prominent artists, Flea in 1938, among them some famous authors, Franz Chocor, Alexander von Zacher, Mazok, German writer, Dina Nelken, and many other visual artists, collaborators, singers, and then they also, one of them was German actress, Dila Durye, who was one of the famous German actresses, and she also lands in Belgrade and later spends the war in Zagreb. And they all also transform the theatre, and generally the cultural scene in Belgrade, Waslavia, in Greece, where the founders and the first directors of the Greek opera and the German Orchestra are also German-kind Jewish refugees.
What new light does your book shed on Italian occupation policies in the Balkans? Can you compare and contrast the Italian and the German occupation policies? Well, this is one of the big controversies in scholarship of the Second World War, is the treatment of Jews by fascist Italy. That changes significantly in 1938 after the fascist Italy upon Nazi German pressure adopts a similar racial laws, and which opened away for discrimination and persecution of Jews in Italy, which did not exist until 1938.
Italy was one of the favourite destinations for Jews in the Interval Period, not only for German Jewish refugees, but for Polish or Hungarian Jewish students, who because of numerous classes, because of restrictions of university admission to Jewish students, not study in their home countries, and most of them ended up studying in Italian universities. So, this changes in 1938, but again, despite its fascist name and leadership, similar to Balkans, the informality is omnipresent in Italy, so Jews continue arriving after 38, and many of these racial laws are not implemented or not fully implemented. And these Italian rescue becomes even more important or widespread, as Italy then joins the Nazi war effort and occupies in the next, these large parts of the Balkans, half of today is Slovenia, the whole Dalmatian coast, the next is Albania, occupies a large portion of Greece and in many Greek islands, and also French Riviera or French coast. And these toleration of the Jews then extends to these areas, and by describing many detail in the whole chapter, the Nazi invasion, which causes then a mass exodus of Jews from Belgrade and Zagreb towards Italians, as everyone back then was aware that Italy is a safe place for Jews.
And this lasts until the end of the capitulation and the withdrawal of Italy from the war in September 1943. The reasons for this attitude are complex, and there were also instances, very few, very rare, where Italian soldiers would not let those enter into the war. And they would also enter into territories under the control, or in one case, in Kosovo, a group of 51 Jews was deported or sent back to Serbia, and they also ended in this concentration camp in Belgrade. And thus, these complex history is continuously debated in historiography.
In my research, I surveyed hundreds of personal testimonies, either written as the events unfolded in letters, in diaries, or subsequently in memoirs, in interviews, in post-war reports to various authorities, collecting these testimonies. And I was struck by an almost unison testimony by thousands of Jewish refugees who describe the attitude of Italians, from rank and file soldiers to commanders to civilians in the administration as a friendly and welcoming to Jews. And I believe that this testimony, the voice of survivors is extremely important and should be heard and not downplayed when discussing the role of fascists Italy in the second or more. In what ways were female Jewish lived experiences in the Balkans, similar or different from male Jewish experiences in the Balkans?
How did Jewish female refugees suffer differently than male refugees? Thank you for this question. This was yet another, let's say, discovery I made along the way during my research, namely searching for testimonies and records of the Jewish exodus in the Balkans. And I realized a large segment of the refugees were female and many of them also left the testimonies.
And this is in sheer contrast to what we know about the Second World War in the Balkans, where almost everything is written by men. And especially if we talk about the rural areas of the Balkans, most women were illiterate back then. And then in sheer contrast, there are thousands of these women coming, as I said, from capitals of culture and civilization in Europe, from cities like Krakow and Berlin and Hamburg. And they're all highly educated and literate and daily called their experiences.
And I find this very valuable as a source material in its own right. Now looking exactly or completely into what they remember or described, there is a difference. There are certain topics which we find only in described or recorded memorized by women, such as topics that belong to everyday life, hygiene, food, provision. But also emotional relationships and tensions between family members or between locals and refugees or between local Jews and German Jews that are particularly tackled.
Many of the taboo topics are only addressed by women such as Grünbaum who survives in Albania or through the Binder or through the Naimans, for example, who was a Gentile, German woman married to a Jew, who was part of the Cladovo transport. And who was part of this terrible march in 1942 and who survived in the camp and only at the moment when she was loaded onto a gas van to be murdered. She admitted to her tortures that she was actually German, a Gentile, and she was released. She was released to Belgrade and she spent the rest of war years in occupied Belgrade and is a cleaner, cleaning people's houses to survive.
And immediately after the war, she wrote about her experience and then a memoir is still not published. It's held here in Vina library in London alongside her correspondence with various German publishing outlets who found in late 40s and 50s various reasons to discard writing or simply said or we made a mistake here. Mother's script ended in a travel section and so on. And she is one of these women that described in detail the experience of refugees that we don't encounter among men.
For example, the practice of effective marriages, many in order to secure their status or to gain long term residents were engaging in effective marriages. Again, as it is very common among refugees and women described in detail these experiences and how they felt and how this unfolded. And they record small gestures of humanity whenever they encounter them as of humanity and solidarity. And this is why they feature prominently in my book.
What kinds of sources did you rely on in conducting this research? What were the challenges you encountered in finding them and relying on them and interpreting them? As I said, when I was moved by Imra's book and Imra's experience to start further research on the topic, first I encountered this another book, a diary of a grads lawyer Ludwig Lios Birock, this is his diary published in German 20, 30 years ago. And it's the most detailed diary of the whole process and the whole exodus from grads community from 38 till 41.
And I was impressed by details about Imra's book and Biro's Ludwig Biro's diary. Checking on historiography, I immediately realized that these experiences, these stories are not represented. And then going into the archives, I realized why this was the case, namely official archives, do not record illegal border transfers or individual random escapes and experiences, especially as these families, individuals that I followed, avoided contacts with authorities and so on. And unlike organized illegal trans-ports of Jews, which are documented both in state archives and archives of respective Zionist organizations, these people were left off the radar.
And yes, many were murdered, but many survived and then eventually ended up elsewhere. And were lost in these flights from Germany, by about, eventually ended up in Italy or America, Britain and in Israel, many other places. And so they fell, let's say, through the gaps, they didn't belong to any nation-states official historiography. And simply, there were two little records of them.
So I had to turn my attention to other types of sources, mostly, as I said, narrative sources or eye sources, written directly by survivors. Some of them date back to the time of the events. As I said, there were some diaries left, some correspondence with other family members in America or other countries, and family members. And there were some other areas separated during the flight.
Others were written right after the war, as reports in displaced persons camps or as reports to Yugoslav and Israeli war crimes investigations. And others were treated much later in the 1980s and 1990s when the tragedy of a Holocaust became a topic, a subject about which it was talked after many years or decades. So I encountered hundreds of different stories. Obviously, I faced lots of challenges dealing with such a heterogeneous material, which was a return over the span of many decades in different contexts.
And I addressed all these challenges. I confront them in my book. But this is the only source we have. And I believe it's very a worthy source, while using, and I could have written many more books.
I had to refrain myself to a readable narrative that I produced. But I have material for much more how rich information are these sources. And again, despite all the challenges and problems in these sources, there are some impressions one simply cannot ignore. And this is the one, for example, I mentioned in case of Italian attitudes both of Italian state, Italian population and Italian army.
There is simply an agreement in all these personal narrative sources about this. And if this is the fact across hundreds of different narrative sources, then I tend to believe them. And that's how I transmitted them in my book. And as I said, contrary to modern historiography claims and opinions about the socialist Italy's attitude to the Jewish question in this period.
So the most special case is in India, where antisemitism was nonexistent. The Jews were almost also non-existent, but there was no knowledge idea about antisemitism. And in Albania, it's known as the only country, which at the end of the Second World War had many more Jews than it's beginning. And almost no Jews lost their lives in Albania.
And in Albania, even the Nazi collaborators saved the Jews and had nothing to do with 70s and anti-Semitism. But basically with the general cultural attitude of Albanians back then that one simply helps those in need. And Jews were back then in the need. And this accounts for a very particular experience in Albania.
On the other hand, it was a very remote place and only very few people found a rescue there because of its remoteness. Yugoslavia in Greece in 1930s were also different than the rest of Europe. Yugoslavia was considered to be philosophitic in that context. And it was a destination for Jews, 1920s, many Polish or Russian Jewish refugees came and settled in Yugoslavia.
So the arrival of German Jews was almost done. A continuous process of Yugoslavia welcoming Jews. And this could be extended also for the period under the taxes in Greece in 1930s, despite the tensions that antisemitism in the Second World War. And it was the greatest Jewish city in the Balkans.
And at some point in Europe, which is a special case. So there is this history of a lesser anti-Semitism on one side, again in the context of interwar Europe. On the other hand, there is this dimension of informality that I stressed. So even when countries such as Yugoslavia, Greece and as I said also Italy introduced anti-Jewish measures, laws, bans on new arrivals and so on.
The seasons, these bans, these rules are very easily avoided, circumnavigated. You lose your residence permit in Belgrade or it expires and then you just move your residence to another town in the countryside or on the coast. So it's not only about semitism, antisemitism, but also it's about informality and informality of these practices that is quite unique in the Balkans. What new lights does your book shed on Yugoslavia in and during the Holocaust?
I have demonstrated how closely connected interspersed, conjoined the fate of the Yugoslav Jews and foreign Jews, but also the fate of the Yugoslavs and Jews. For example, for very long Jewish history has been treated outside of European history as a separate entity. And there is also this attitude often to take Holocaust and treat it outside of local context. In Yugoslavia, this is impossible.
I gave you the example of the Vladivot transport and they were shot in Nazi German retaliation for the acts of Yugoslav partisans. The destinies were mutually connected, but those who managed to escape to the mountains then found rescue by Yugoslav partisans, Croatia and Bosnian mountains. And this is in my book through these personal narrative sources, I shed new light on Yugoslavia during the war. Little-known topics that I mentioned described by women refugees, also men refugees, that we know very little of life in the partisans, apart from their fights with Nazis and so on, how they survived, how they fed each other, how they spent time entertained.
It's a segment I missed to talk about, but even in the worst possible conditions, Jews are organizing education, Jewish refugees for their children, and cultural activities in these camps, in Italian-in-term camps, and among the partisans, and wherever they are, and wherever this is possible, and I bring to light a lot of these activities from a very particular perspective, because these Jewish refugees are both outsiders, and right, and share these perspectives of an outsider, but also having spent and having learned the local language over years, like even in athletes, they become insiders. So in the descriptions that they mix these outsiders inside a perspective, and thus shed a new light and very rich stories about the war. Thank you. What is your book's contribution to the history and historiography of World War II?
My book's contribution is less about major political or military events, battles of the World War II, that we know very well by now, or even by major stages of Holocaust. On the other hand, it gives personal human account of how these major political events, military events, relate, and are experienced by common people who are victims, but who never, almost never accept these role as victims, but always perceive themselves as protagonists. And in the narrative sources that they create, they retell what it was really like to live under these circumstances, and they share a belt of information about informal practices that help them survive the war, like the national and all sorts of transactions, emotional turmoil that they were exposed to, and how they overcome to, and enormous wealth of detail of everyday life as refugee or in war circumstances. And this is something that it's a greatest contribution to, let's say World War II history in the Balkans.
What lacunae in the historiography of the Holocaust does your research fill? What accounts for these blind spots? There's a huge lacuna, huge gap, is first between organized and non-organized flight from the Reich, and most of historiography only deals with organized escape, and especially when it comes to the Balkans, and is mostly concerned with formal, let's say, aspects of the escape, who is transporting whom and what obstacles are put on the way and how are these officially overcome. In my book is the Jewish refugees, and the protagonists, and they are at the heart of the story, and the story is told from the perspective, and this is the biggest gap in our existing knowledge of both the flight of Jewish refugees, but also the more in the Balkans.
As we bring today's dialogue to a close, can you tell us about where your time and attention have gone since completing this project? Well, it was extremely difficult to come across these sources, who are scattered various languages in various archives and online archives, or in situ archives in various countries, and were eventually survivors among the refugees, eventually settled. So simply coming across sources was the most time consuming energy consuming because of their distant location, and there is no institution or scholarly framework that would unite them, even though they all escape via the Balkans, and this is a my book is a synthesis of the variety of these materials and archives from many different countries, both the countries of origin, but also former archives, and narrative sources who are dispersed in all sorts of locations, as I said, many are published, and finally they are now put together in a cohesive volume. As we bring today's dialogue to a close, I'd like to thank you for your generosity, eloquence, erudition, and care, as expressed in all the topics we discussed, and all your responses during the course of our dialogue.
I could not be more thankful. Thank you, Ari, and thank you for helping me to bring to light this little known aspect of the Jewish and Holocaust history. As we bring today's dialogue to a close, I am signing off as your host on the new books in Jewish Studies podcast, Ari Barblat. Today I've been in dialogue with Dr.
Boyan Alexov. We have discussed his newly published book, Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933 to 1945, published in Leiden, Netherlands. By Braille, 2023, Dr. Alexov is Associate Professor in Southeast European History in the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies at University College London.
Thank you wholeheartedly.