English
Bulgarian
 
DRAFT RESOLUTION
 
HISTORY
 
DECOMMUNIZATION
 
SOURCES
Draft resolution
Support

Resolution 1096

 

Communist Terror
Testimonies
Documents
Denazification
Decommunization
National Agencies
Internet Sources
Books

Articles
History > Testimonies
  Testimonies

TESTIMONIES IN INTERNET

Collectivization as a national downfall
Rich archive containing documents and memories about the forced collectivization in the Soviet Union, kolkhozes, starvation and violent Soviet government.
In Russian.

Testimonies (Svedectvi)
The Office of the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism, Czech Republic

Laogai Surviver
Testimonies from former inmates of China's forced labor camps

The Digital Archive of Cambodian Holocaust Survivors
Survivers stories

Tiananmen Mothers Campaign
Testimonies of the families of those killed and wounded in the Massacre, June 4, 1989

Interviews with exiles from Tibet

The Bulgarian Gulag
Witnesses

A collection of documentary stories of concentrations camps in Bulgaria
Editors: Ekaterina Boncheva, Edvin Sugarev, Svilen Patov, Jean Solomon
Sofia, 1991

"Every story in this book features a turbulent life story that does not end, but starts with the camp. Follow displacements, periodic interviews by the militia, social isolation, impossibility to exercise one’s profession, various harassment on one’s relatives, children. A smashing apology of human suffering that no repentance could redeem. Even now, after so many years, many of these people are scared. Some asked us not to publish their names. I understand them and I think their fear is not baseless. That is why it is our duty to remember their past, to inscribe their pain in the history of these shameful decades. Because it is an old truth that whoever does not remember their past will be damned to live it again."
Edvin Sugarev

 

 

Tales from the Dark: Testimonies about the Communist Terror
Published by The Assistance Centre for Torture Survivors - ACET

The book presents several typical stories of sufferings, experienced by thousands of people during the communist regime in Bulgaria. These are authentic experiences of the people who survived the communist concentration camps, political wards of prison, false accusations and trials, death sentences, forced displacement, exile and deprivation of the rights to study, work, or freely choose the place of residence, and all kinds of physical and psychological terror. The book includes a confession of the second generation.

 

The Things I Know About the People's Tribunal in 1944-1945

by Peter Semerdjiev


"The role of the [communist] party committee in [the town of] Sliven and my role, as its secretary was not limited to my participation in deliberations on the composition of the people's tribunal and the control on the trials. The severity of each convict's penalty was another issue where no decision would ever be made without taking my opinion in consideration or coordinating with my guidance. The sentence was usually decided upon in my office where I called the people's prosecutor Peter Filipov and Mara Eneva as a member of the panel of the people's tribunal. No objections have ever been made on behalf of both to my suggestions and clarifications concerning certain convicts. I recall Mara Eneva's complaint that one of the panel members in their conversations opposed her statements in favor of death sentences and was of the opinion that there should be no severe punishment and death sentences."
 

Kolio Kolev from the Slunchev Briag concentration camp:
"I Blame Mircho Spasov [deputy minister of the interior] and the Party Most"
 

They shot at us like they shot at crows

The story of Luben Kardjiev from Silistra about the political oppression he has survived, the prison and the Belene concentration camp.
In Bulgarian
 
A Gulag and Holocaust Memoir of Janina Sulkowska-Gladun
Janina was a university student when Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland in 1939. "Janka" joined the underground with friends, but in 1940 she was arrested by the NKVD, tortured and shipped to the Gulag. Her entire family would be deported to Siberia, and many relatives and friends suffered and died at the hands of the Soviets and Nazis. Janina's memoir chronicles her amazing odyssey, starting with the invasion of Poland, as a prisoner in the outposts of the Gulag, her survival in the USSR and escape, and finally exile in India and England.
  About this site   Contact us   Copyright   Partners