NEWS

Beyond the borders of debt

19/05/16

On May 19 2016, the exhibition "Beyond the borders of debt" opened at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This is a project by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain and aims to acquaint the audience with the work and personalities of several Spanish diplomats who helped hundreds of Jews escape concentration camps by issuing visas and transit documents.

Among them stands out the name of Julio Palencia y Tubau, Minister Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of Spain in Sofia in the period 1940-1943, who risked his career and security in order to save the lives of many Jews of Sephardic origin in Bulgaria. His personal, humane mission put him into open conflict with the authorities and the representatives of Nazi Germany, and he will be remembered for his decision to adopt the children of Jewish merchant Leon Arie, who was executed after an unfair trial. In this way, he ensured that they had the protection of Spanish nationality. After this act, the Spanish diplomat was declared persona non grata by the authorities. This gesture coincided with the then-already rising public campaign in Bulgaria in favour of Bulgarian Jews and made it part of the chronicle of the unprecedented Bulgarian opposition to the plans to annhilate the Bulgarian Jews.

At the opening of the exhibition, the Director of the State Institute for Culture, Mrs. Lyudmila Dimitrova, thanked the Ambassador of Spain in Sofia Jose Luis Tapia and Mr. Miguel de Lucas, Director of the Sefarad-Israel Centro, for the initiative and for the opportunity for the Bulgarian audience to get acquainted with and pay homage to the work of Julio Palencia y Tubau and all Spanish diplomats who saved thousands of lives.

She pointed out that the Sefarad-Israel Centro was one of the emblematic places in 2013 where the Bulgarian exhibition "The Power of Civil Society: The Fate of the Jews in Bulgaria" was shown.

In his address, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Rumen Alexandrov underlined what all those depicted in the exhibition had in common, that each of them had unmistakably recognised on which side of the line dividing humanity and barbarism they should stand. The story takes one through destinies and situations but does not give a sense of something that was a one-off but that was a position that was well-thought-through and defended. The Deputy Minister said that that the name of Julio Palencia Tubau will take its rightful place in Bulgarian memory, in the ranks of diplomats such as Vito Positano, Leander Lege and Eugene Schuyler, who passionately defended justice. He used the opportunity to once again thank the Ambassador of Spain in Sofia HE Jose Vicente Tapia, who during his term of office in Tripoli backed the cause of the Bulgarian nurses used as scapegoats by a despotic regime.

The Director of the Seferad-Israel Centro, Mr. Miguel de Lucas, spoke of the idea of creating the exhibition. The history of the resistance in the name of humanism is one of the best trademarks of Spain. This is a story - valid for Spain and Bulgaria - about our values as Europeans and gives us confidence that the worst scenarios can be prevented if among us there are people for whom respect for human life is paramount.

One of the relatives of the Arie family, Rene Arav, conveyed congratulations to the guests, who included ambassadors and diplomatic representatives in Sofia, representatives of the Jewish community and of the media.

The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the State Cultural Institute at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria, is part of the events that the Embassy of Spain in Sofia organized on May 18 and 19 2016 in memory of the Spanish diplomat.