site.btaNational Assembly Chair Pays Homage to Victims of Communist Regime

On February 1, Bulgaria marks the Day of Gratitude and Homage to the Victims of the Communist Regime. The largest single spate of executions in Bulgarian history was carried out on this date 81 years ago.

February 1 bears a tragic mark in Bulgarian history, National Assembly Chair Raya Nazaryan wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday. On this day, the unconstitutional “People’s Court” handed down death sentences against a number of Bulgarian statesmen, politicians, and senior military officers, sentences that were carried out with particular brutality later that same night. On the eve of the Day of Gratitude and Homage to the Victims of the Communist Regime, Nazaryan lit a candle and bowed in honour of the victims.

February 1 remains in our history as a crime against the ideal of freedom, a crime against the fundamental human right to defence, and an example of an act rooted in political arrogance and the ruthless elimination of any inconvenient opponent, Nazaryan further wrote.

“By commemorating this dark date, we are more resolute than ever that this must never happen again. We pay tribute to the victims of the communist dictatorship with the clear awareness that we owe a debt to their memory. We are obliged to pass on the historical facts objectively to future generations, to rid our society of the remnants that glorify communism, and never to allow such retribution, cruelty, and lawlessness against any political opponent,” Nazaryan stated.

“I trust that all democratically minded people, regardless of their political affiliation today, will unite to guarantee justice and a dignified memory for the victims of the communist dictatorship,” she added. Nazaryan emphasized that politics should not divide people but unite them, that opponents must be respected rather than persecuted, and, most importantly, that politics exists for the people, not against them.

By a government decision, February 1 has been officially marked since 2011 as the Day of Gratitude and Homage to the Victims of the Communist Regime, on the initiative of former Presidents Zhelyu Zhelev (1990-1997) and Petar Stoyanov (1997-2002).

On the night of February 1 to 2, 1945, just hours after hearing their death sentences, 100 men were loaded in the back of six trucks and taken to the northern perimeter of Sofia’s Central Cemetery, where they were shot. The common grave was filled with truckloads of cinders, and guards were posted to keep mourners away. The site was later turned into a waste dump.

The people who were executed on what came to be known as “Bloody Thursday” were part of the country’s political top brass that had been ousted by a coup on September 9, 1944: the three former regents of the underage King Simeon II (Prince Kiril of Preslav, Prof. Bogan Filov and General Nikola Mihov), ex-prime ministers Dobri Bozhilov and Ivan Bagryanov, 20 ministers of the five wartime cabinets, 67 members of the last Parliament before the communist takeover, and eight royal advisers.