Bissera Videnova

    On June 1, 2024, on the island of Persin, the town of Belene, Bulgaria, the Annual commemoration day honoring the Victims of the Totalitarian Communist Regime in the Belene Camp - 2024 was held!

    For the second year, a citizen initiative committee is organizing the event. Its goal is to draw the attention of the state and the site of the former camp, make Camp 2 a historic building for the victims of the communist regime, and complete the memorial.

    This year, the event received more media coverage. The former president of the Republic of Bulgaria, Peter Stoyanov, the Minister of Defense in the interim government and the Ambassador of Turkey, honored it.

    The last living survivors of the camp were present, as well as many heirs and relatives of the victims.

    The "Belene" labor camp was established by a confidential decision of the BKP government with Prime Minister Georgi Dimitrov on April 27, 1949. It was closed in 1953, following Moscow's policy of temporarily reducing repression in the camps of the Gulag penal system in the USSR. After the Hungarian             People's Uprising outbreak in the autumn of 1956, the communist authorities reopened "Belene." In 1959, the camp was closed again after Prime Minister Anton Yugov stated in an interview with a Western publication that there were no more camps in Bulgaria. At the end of 1984, the communist regime reopened "Belene," where it isolated 517 Bulgarian citizens of Turkish origin, opponents of the so-called revival process. The last campers were released in 1987.