In March 1943, about 4,075 Jews living in Bulgarian-occupied eastern Greek Macedonia and Western Thrace (annexed as the Bulgarian province of Belomorie) were deported to Treblinka extermination camp and murdered.

The ancient Greek-speaking Romaniote Jewish communities of Thrace and Macedonia were almost erased by their forced resettlement in Constantinople in 1455 by the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II.

[1] At the end of the fifteenth century, the Ottomans allowed Judeo-Spanish-speaking Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from Spain to resettle the area; they were joined by later Ashkenazi migrants, but the Sephardim remained dominant.

[2] The area was conquered from the Ottoman Empire by Bulgaria during the Balkan Wars, but its western part (Eastern Macedonia) was ceded to Greece afterwards.

[14] Some Jews, around 20 percent of the prewar population of 5,490, fled to Salonica in the German occupation zone or farther to the Italian-occupied area.

According to historian Steven Bowman, Hitler believed that Jewish populations would hamper the Axis defenses in the event of invasion.

[17] On 4 February 1943, Alexander Belev of Bulgaria's Commissariat for Jewish Affairs [de] (KEV) outlined plans to deport Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Thrace and Yugoslavia in a report to Interior Minister Petar Gabrovski.

[18] Initially there was a plan to build several transit camps in Bulgaria, but after inspections Belev narrowed the sites to Gorna Dzhumaya and Dupnica where he felt local cooperation would be forthcoming.

[21] On 2 March 1943, the cabinet issued a series of decrees approving the deportation of Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Greece and ordering various ministries to prepare for and execute it.

[23] The operation was executed at 04:00 on 4 March 1943 in all the places in Belomorie with a significant Jewish population—Komotini, Alexandroupoli, Kavala, Drama, Xanthi, and Serres—and came as a surprise to the Jews awakened, some arrested wearing only underwear.

[26] The KEV reported that 42 people were arrested in Alexandroupolis, 3 in Samothrace, 589 in Drama, 878 in Komotini, 1,484 in Kavala, 19 in Eleftheroupoli, 16 in Thasos, 526 in Xanthi, 12 in Chrysoupoli, 471 from Serres, and 18 in Ziliahovo [bg; el].

[27][32] The conditions were so harsh that many Jews fell ill and a few died, while pregnant women had to give birth in the open cars.

[27][33] At Gorna Dzhumaya, Jews had to walk a mile from the train station to the transit camps at the Rainov tobacco warehouse and the School of Economics.

[27][37] In Sofia a representative of the railway company counted the passengers to determine the fare, charged to the KEV, which was covered using the proceeds of Jewish property sales.

[46] After the deportation, the KEV sold the movable property of the deportees for the "Jewish community fund" placed at the disposal of the agency.

Those involved in this organized despoliation included policemen, judges, KEV officials, laborers, and civil servants assigned to the liquidation committees.