The lawyer and former justice minister Dimitar Peshev was a member of the Bulgarian parliament and its vice-president from 1938. Peshev supported the government’s pro-German policy.
In 1940 Dimitar Peshev voted in parliament in favor of the anti-Semitic Act for the Protection of the Nation, believing he was acting in Bulgaria’s economic interest. Nonetheless, he protested against the planned deportation of Jews from Bulgaria’s heartland in March 1943. He made the secret deportations public in parliament and demanded, along with other parliamentarians, that the deportations from Bulgaria should be ceased. He also wrote a three-page protest letter to the prime minister. He was removed from his post as vice-president of parliament in response. The protest by Peshev and other members of parliament nonetheless helped to stop Jews being deported from the Bulgarian heartland.
After the end of the war, Peshev was imprisoned for a year, as a member of parliament for the pro-German government. His property was confiscated and he was not allowed to work after his release.
In 1973 the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem honored Dimitar Peshev as Righteous Among the Nations.