Entrusted to oversee Bulgaria’s demographic policy and to head the Federal Council of Minority Integration, Mr. Simeonov has had a checkered record of anti-Semitic, anti-minorities, and even neo-Nazi statements and actions. As early as the 1970s, when he was a student and visited the former concentration camp in Buchenwald, he posed for what he termed “joke photos”, mocking the victims of the Holocaust. Commenting on his and his fellow students despicable behavior he asked rhetorically: “Come to think of it, who knows what kind of joke photos we took there (meaning in Buchenwald). Can one say now, submit your resignation and go back to the village?”
Members of the sizable Roma community have not fared better by Mr. Simeonov. Musing about the size of the Roma families he stated: “They are brazen, feral, human-like creatures that demand pay without work, and collect sickness benefits without being sick. They receive child benefits for children that play with pigs on the street, and for women that have the instinct of stray dogs.” His party program includes a proposal to demolish “Gypsy ghettos” and the isolation of the entire Roma population in closed “reservations.” For good measure, the party program also proposes that such “reservations” should be used profitably by dressing them up as “tourist attractions.” To prove that he has not matured since his student years, Mr. Simeonov publicly opined about establishing “modern concentration camps” for the country’s minorities.
