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