11 343 Jews from the Bulgarian-occupied territories of Macedonia, Thrace and Pirot, transported them by train through Bulgaria via transit camps established for the purpose there, and embarked them on boats bound for Vienna in Nazi Germany. Twelve of them would survive. Also in March 1943 Bulgarian military police, assisted by German soldiers, massacred deported Jews from Komotini and Kavala, who were on board passenger steamship Karageorge, and sank the vessel. When the deportation moved from the occupied territories to the pre-1941 ones, news of the preparations for the deportations incited protest among opposition politicians, members of the clergy and intellectuals in Bulgaria. While Tsar Boris III was initially inclined to continue with the planned deportations, on March 9 several members of the ruling party in the Parliament - Petar Mikhalev, Dimitar Ikonomov, the deputy speaker Dimitar Peshev and others forced the interior minister Gabrovski to temporary halt the deportation of the rest of the Jews. On March 17, 1943, Peshev sent a letter, signed by 42 more members of the Parliament, to the prime-minister Bogdan Filov, in which he wrote that "It is impossible for us to accept that plans have been made to deport these people, even though ill-minded rumours attribute this intention to the Bulgarian government." For his role in preparing the letter, Peshev was forced to resign. More protests took place, notably from Metropolitan Stefan I, which pressured the tsar to suspend the deportations indefinitely in May 1943. Shortly thereafter, the Bulgarian government expelled 20,000 Jews from Sofia to the provinces. Special trains were arranged and the Jews were assigned specific departures, separating family members. A maximum of 30 kg of property per person was allowed; the rest they were forced to leave behind or to sell at "abusively low" prices, and part of it was otherwise pilfered or stolen. Bulgarian officials and neighbours benefited from this process. The Bulgarian government cited labour shortages as the reason for refusing to transfer Bulgarian Jews into German custody. Expelled men were conscripted as forced labour within Bulgaria. Some of the property left behind was confiscated. Shortly after returning to Sofia from an August 14 meeting with Hitler, Boris died of apparent heart failure on 28 August 1943. Dimitar Peshev, opposition politicians, the Bulgarian Church, prominent writers and artists, lawyers and former diplomats, have been variously credited with rescuing the Bulgarian Jews. In 1998, Bulgarian Jews in the United