1 February is Remembrance Day here in Bulgaria for Victims of Communism - but
has been so only since 2011. September 9th (1944) is the date which
occurs in most of the accounts I have read since it was then that the Communist takeover of Bulgaria took place and the lynching, execution and incarceration of thousands of people got underway– but it was on 1
February that
…….the death sentence was passed upon 147 people from the political elite of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom, including 67 former MPs and 22 ministers from cabinets during 1940-1944, among them prime ministers of that time Bogdan Filov, Dobri Bozhilov and Ivan Bagryanov, as well as the three regents – Prince Kyril of Preslav, Prof. Bogdan Filov and General Nikola Mihov. The sentence was passed in the Palace of Justice at 4 pm on 1 February 1945. The same night, the best known of the defendants were executed at the Central Sofia Cemetery and their bodies were buried in a common grave, but it was not before August 1996 that a Christian cross was erected upon it. The sentences were justified entirely on political grounds. The main defendants had first been sent for interrogation to the former Soviet Union and after their return to Bulgaria and establishment of the People’s Court, their sentences were agreed upon between the Political Bureau of the Bulgarian Workers’ Party (BWP) and the Soviet leadership. Present day research of the activity of the People’s Court leaves no doubt that the entire legal proceedings were politically biased and the fate of the defendants was decided on outside the courtroom.
August
23 was actually named as European remembrance day for victims of communism and Nazism - although both Hungary and Latvia commemorate the victims of communism on February
25.
I am an outsider so should be careful about comments....I have to wonder, however, about the appropriateness of contemporary Bulgarian politicians selecting the best date for such commemoration. Most people these days would not hesitate to string the political class up (God forgive me!). I don't, of course, know anything about how the Bulgarian establishment was viewed by its public in the early 1940s - but it could be argued that it is more appropriate to remember the thousands of more ordinary people who, for a variety of (often dubious) reasons, were summarily executed in those early days of chaos.
It was bad enough that the judiciary put its stamp on such decisions but just as appalling was the way partisans and others took justice into their own hands and bludgeoned people to death in the even earlier days of the collpase of the old regime. Many ordinary people must have been amongst the perpetrators and constitute a blot on the country's reputation. One reason perhaps why the present-day politicians prefer another date for remembrance.....
I am an outsider so should be careful about comments....I have to wonder, however, about the appropriateness of contemporary Bulgarian politicians selecting the best date for such commemoration. Most people these days would not hesitate to string the political class up (God forgive me!). I don't, of course, know anything about how the Bulgarian establishment was viewed by its public in the early 1940s - but it could be argued that it is more appropriate to remember the thousands of more ordinary people who, for a variety of (often dubious) reasons, were summarily executed in those early days of chaos.
It was bad enough that the judiciary put its stamp on such decisions but just as appalling was the way partisans and others took justice into their own hands and bludgeoned people to death in the even earlier days of the collpase of the old regime. Many ordinary people must have been amongst the perpetrators and constitute a blot on the country's reputation. One reason perhaps why the present-day politicians prefer another date for remembrance.....
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