Commissariat of Jewish Affairs
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.[9]
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.[10]
Belev's role had officially been to resettle Bulgaria's Jewish population but in June 1942 he reported that such a solution would be impossible during wartime, unless the Bulgarian government was prepared to turn the task over to the Germans.[11] As such on 22 February 1943 he signed a pact with Dannecker to deliver 20,000 Jews to Eichmann, with 12,000 coming from the newly annexed territories of Western Thrace and east Macedonia and the rest from Bulgaria,
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