by Marian Draganov
SOFIA, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) -- Bulgarian scriptwriter and novelist Angel Wagenstein called for a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis and said China's position on the issue is more correct than that held by the West.
"The only human solution to this new bloody drama that has so far cost 30,000 lives is the good-natured dialogue between the parties," Wagenstein told Xinhua in an interview.
"Guns have never led to final justice. I do not believe in guns."
A 90-year-old author of more than 50 screenplays and several novels, his account of war has stemmed from real-life experiences. During WWII, he led an anti-fascist group in Sofia and worked at guerrilla headquarters.
He was arrested by fascists and sentenced to death in May 1944, 137 days before the liberation of the country from fascism. He then survived.
His recent novel, "Farewell, Shanghai," the 2004 winner of the Jean Monnet Prize for European literature, describes a different page of the anti-fascist struggle.
It was about the survival of numerous German and Austrian Jews, who, according to Wagenstein, would die in Hitler's concentration camps, but survived because they found refuge in Shanghai.
"Few people in Europe, and I think in China, know that in Shanghai was situated one ghetto, Jewish ghetto, in the Hongkou district, formed in accordance to the international status of Shanghai as an open city," Wagenstein said.
When the civilized world, mostly intellectuals in the United States, France, and England, refused to admit Jews, they found in Shanghai the only way to survive, he said.
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