I really have to thank Danndy Garbag for his reply. I've been trying to post my comment for several days now and every time it was deleted (one should wonder why). Since then Danndy Garbag's post disappeared or was deleted (probably because he was writing from Greece) but still he raised some points deserving answers.
I should start with a definition from Encyclopaedia Britanica: annexation, a formal act whereby a state proclaims its sovereignty over territory hitherto outside its domain. Unlike cession, whereby territory is given or sold through treaty, annexation is a unilateral act made effective by actual possession and legitimized by general recognition.
As was said before and in this age of Internet not difficult to verify, parts of the geographical region of Macedonia wеrе occupied by Nazi Germany, not Bulgaria. Bulgaria was administrating those lands on behalf of Germany. The status of Macedonia was left to be decided after the war. Furthermore, Adolf Heinz Beckerle, who was Hitler's ambassador in Bulgaria during the war, was arrested by the Russians in 1945. As the German Der Spiegel writes, the protocols from the interrogations not only of Beckerle but of other prominent German figures were recently made public and collected in few volumes in Russia. According to those protocols Beckerle confessed for the following: "Following the orders of Himmler I managed to achieve the deportation of 14000 to 15000 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace. On my demand they were transported to Poland. I'm not aware of their further fate." Bulgarian police did take part in gathering the Jews from Bitola and Skopje, that is true. Jews were transported to Poland from detention centers in Skopje and Bulgarian town of Lom. There were 3 train transports out of Skopje, all of them organized and guarded by Germans - documented according to the Israeli Yad Vashem. There were 4 ships out of Lom to Viena - 3 Yugoslavian and 1 German. It is also known that when the transports to Lom were passing through Bulgarian territory, at one of the train stations Bulgarian peasants armed with really whatever they could find tried to forcefully set the Jews free. The German soldiers were ordered to act energetically. To prevent further escalation this matter was brought to Boris III - the tzar of Bulgaria. He said his hands were tied since Jews from Macedonia were not Bulgarian citizens. On this matter it is not difficult to verify facts with the results from the Wanesse meeting (where Nazis decided on the fate of European Jews) - the so called Wanesse list. There, for Bulgaria they had 48,000 Jews which was the Jewish population before April 1941 in old Bulgaria. This comes to show that Nazis didn't recognize the Bulgarian jurisdiction over the Macedonian and Thrace Jews. Jews deportation from Macedonia was not really secret - in Skopje Jews were held in the Tobacco Monopoly for about 2 weeks. And again, no one from Macedonia moved a pinkie to free them. I can't exclude few acts where Jews were hidden by their Christian neighbors, such isolated cases happened all over Europe. But interesting, if this was so widespread in Macedonia, why then their government propagands that the entire Macedonian Jewish population was exterminated during the war. Danndy Garbag, I don't know who your grandmother is. But it is well known that Serbs and Greeks were the ones who forcibly changed Macedonian names to Serbian resp. Greek. No such thing for example happened to people from Pirin Macedonia (the Bulgarian part of Macedonia) - and there was no need for that - people in Pirin are one of the staunchest Bulgarians. Lastly, Bulgarian troops were indeed met with jubilation and flowers by Macedonian population and no guns and no bombs behind them. Documents, movie trailers and pictures abound from that time. Anything to the contrary is just modern day FYROM's propaganda with a communist taste,too. Maybe suffice to say that Tito had to import Serbian partisans into Macedonia to fight the Bulgarian army, there were not enough volunteers from the Macedonians themselves. Yes, it is indeed important for the foreign readers not to get mistaken watching the movie and believing that's what happened. Any loss of life, especially one on the scale of the Jewish Holocaust is a human tragedy. But it is enormously wrong to use this for propaganda purposes in a way this movies does. Nowadays we are fortunate, there is Internet and lots of information. People can make educated decisions easier compared to, say, 20 years ago.
I should start with a definition from Encyclopaedia Britanica: annexation, a formal act whereby a state proclaims its sovereignty over territory hitherto outside its domain. Unlike cession, whereby territory is given or sold through treaty, annexation is a unilateral act made effective by actual possession and legitimized by general recognition.
As was said before and in this age of Internet not difficult to verify, parts of the geographical region of Macedonia wеrе occupied by Nazi Germany, not Bulgaria. Bulgaria was administrating those lands on behalf of Germany. The status of Macedonia was left to be decided after the war. Furthermore, Adolf Heinz Beckerle, who was Hitler's ambassador in Bulgaria during the war, was arrested by the Russians in 1945. As the German Der Spiegel writes, the protocols from the interrogations not only of Beckerle but of other prominent German figures were recently made public and collected in few volumes in Russia. According to those protocols Beckerle confessed for the following: "Following the orders of Himmler I managed to achieve the deportation of 14000 to 15000 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace. On my demand they were transported to Poland. I'm not aware of their further fate." Bulgarian police did take part in gathering the Jews from Bitola and Skopje, that is true. Jews were transported to Poland from detention centers in Skopje and Bulgarian town of Lom. There were 3 train transports out of Skopje, all of them organized and guarded by Germans - documented according to the Israeli Yad Vashem. There were 4 ships out of Lom to Viena - 3 Yugoslavian and 1 German. It is also known that when the transports to Lom were passing through Bulgarian territory, at one of the train stations Bulgarian peasants armed with really whatever they could find tried to forcefully set the Jews free. The German soldiers were ordered to act energetically. To prevent further escalation this matter was brought to Boris III - the tzar of Bulgaria. He said his hands were tied since Jews from Macedonia were not Bulgarian citizens. On this matter it is not difficult to verify facts with the results from the Wanesse meeting (where Nazis decided on the fate of European Jews) - the so called Wanesse list. There, for Bulgaria they had 48,000 Jews which was the Jewish population before April 1941 in old Bulgaria. This comes to show that Nazis didn't recognize the Bulgarian jurisdiction over the Macedonian and Thrace Jews. Jews deportation from Macedonia was not really secret - in Skopje Jews were held in the Tobacco Monopoly for about 2 weeks. And again, no one from Macedonia moved a pinkie to free them. I can't exclude few acts where Jews were hidden by their Christian neighbors, such isolated cases happened all over Europe. But interesting, if this was so widespread in Macedonia, why then their government propagands that the entire Macedonian Jewish population was exterminated during the war. Danndy Garbag, I don't know who your grandmother is. But it is well known that Serbs and Greeks were the ones who forcibly changed Macedonian names to Serbian resp. Greek. No such thing for example happened to people from Pirin Macedonia (the Bulgarian part of Macedonia) - and there was no need for that - people in Pirin are one of the staunchest Bulgarians. Lastly, Bulgarian troops were indeed met with jubilation and flowers by Macedonian population and no guns and no bombs behind them. Documents, movie trailers and pictures abound from that time. Anything to the contrary is just modern day FYROM's propaganda with a communist taste,too. Maybe suffice to say that Tito had to import Serbian partisans into Macedonia to fight the Bulgarian army, there were not enough volunteers from the Macedonians themselves. Yes, it is indeed important for the foreign readers not to get mistaken watching the movie and believing that's what happened. Any loss of life, especially one on the scale of the Jewish Holocaust is a human tragedy. But it is enormously wrong to use this for propaganda purposes in a way this movies does. Nowadays we are fortunate, there is Internet and lots of information. People can make educated decisions easier compared to, say, 20 years ago.