increased Bulgaria's Jewish population to around 60,000. These were forbidden to have Bulgarian citizenship under the Law for the Protection of the Nation. From early in the war, Bulgarian occupation authorities in Greece and Yugoslavia handed over Jewish refugees fleeing from Axis Europe to the Gestapo. In October 1941 Bulgarian authorities demanded the registration of 213 Serbian Jews detected by the Gestapo in Bulgarian-administered Skopje; they were arrested on 24 November and 47 of these were taken to Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade, Serbia and killed on 3 December 1941. In the wake of the Wannsee Conference, German diplomats requested, in the spring of 1942, that the Kingdom release into German custody all Jews residing in Bulgarian-administered territory. The Bulgarian side agreed and began to take steps for the planned deportations of Jews. The Law was followed by a decree-law (naredbi) on 26 August 1942, which tightened restrictions on Jews, widened the definition of Jewishness, and increased the burdens of proof required to prove non-Jewish status and exemptions (privilegii). Jews were thereafter required to wear yellow stars, excepting only those baptized who practised the Christian eucharist. Bulgarian Jews married to non-Jews by Christian rite before 1 September 1940 and baptized before the 23 January 1941 enforcement of the Law for the Protection of the Nation had the exemptions allowed to such cases by the Law rescinded. Exemptions for war orphans, war widows, and the disabled veterans were henceforth applicable only "in the event of competition with other Jews", and all such privilegii could be revoked or denied if the individual was convicted of a crime or deemed "anti-government" or "communist". On 22 February 1943, the Bulgarian authorities finalized arrangements with Adolf Eichmann's office for the first wave of planned deportations, targeting total of 20,000 Jews, of which 8,000 in Bulgaria and about 12,000 in the Bulgarian-occupied territories of Thrace, Macedonia. On 27 March 1943 U.S. President Roosevelt discussed "the question of the 60 or 70 thousand Jews that are in Bulgaria and are threatened with extermination..." with the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who effectively refused such an effort, on the grounds that "if we do that then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make a similar offer in Poland and Germany [...] there are simply not enough ships." In the first days of March 1943, Bulgarian military and police carried out the deportation of all