Alexander Belev

Alexander Belev (Bulgarian: Александър Белев) (1898, Lom, Bulgaria – 9 September 1944, Bulgaria) was the Bulgarian commissar of Jewish Affairs during World War II, famous with his antisemitic and strongly nationalistic views. He played a central role in the deportation of some 12,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps in occupied Poland. He was also one of the founders of the Bulgarian nationalist Ratniks.

Belev was born in 1898. His mother was an Italian from Dalmatia named Melanese, and Belev was often dogged by unsubstantiated rumours that her father was Jewish.

Belev studied law at Sofia University and in Germany before returning to Bulgaria to work as a lawyer. He spent a number of years working within the Ministry of the Interior. The protégé of Interior Minister Petar Gabrovski, a strong supporter of fascism, Belev was sent to Nazi Germany in 1941 on Gabrovski's initiative in order to study the Nuremberg laws with a view to introducing a similar system for Bulgaria. Belev was already notorious as one of the country's most outspoken anti-Semitic politicians.

In February 1942, the Commissariat of Jewish Affairs was established as a department within the Interior Ministry. Gabrovski appointed Belev to serve as the new body's first chairman. He promulgated a new set of laws in August 1942 governing the treatment of Bulgaria's Jews. Based on the Nuremberg Laws, Belev's decrees instituted the wearing of identification stars, corralling into ghettoes and strong restrictions on the movement of Jews.

During this time Belev was a close associate and political ally of SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Theodor Dannecker, chief of the Gestapo in Bulgaria and deputy to Adolf Eichmann.

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