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Histories from Belene
We dedicate this project to Bulgaria’s young people and to the victims of communism!
This website is part of the Histories from Belene project of the Sofia Platform Foundation.
In order to preserve the memories about the communist regime and about the Belene camp, we recorded extensive interviews with survivors of the Belene camp, covering more than 3,000 questions. This formed the basis of the software for the virtual conversations with survivors, which you can access and conduct on this website. Along with these virtual conversations, we also created a digital tour of Belene, which offers 10 sites in and around the town of Belene. The tour is also accessible via this website.
We dedicate this project to Bulgaria’s young people and to the victims of communism!
We are grateful for the trust and courage of the survivors of the labor camp whom we interviewed. We express our gratitude for the support of Prof Daniela Koleva (Sofia University), Prof Momchil Metodiev (New Bulgarian University), Dimitar Dimov (Institute for the Study for the Near Past at New Bulgarian University) and Borislav Skochev – author of the extensive study The Belene Concentration Camp 1949-1987.
Belene is a special place with warm people. In predominantly Christian Orthodox Bulgaria, it is one of the few catholic towns. The Persina island nearby is home to thousands of different bird species and is a beautiful nature reserve. Besides this, however, the town was the site of the largest camp for those detained without trial or sentence in communist Bulgaria, the so-called Labor-education hostel.
For almost ten years, the Sofia Platform Foundation has been one of the few organizations which implements educational activities in Belene with the priceless support of the local community and especially Father Paolo Cortesi, Mihail Marinov from the Belene Island Foundation and the Belene Municipality.
The Histories from Belene project and our work as a whole would not have been possible without the support of the wider community of researchers, histories, writers and artists who are interested in communism. And most of all, it would not have been possible without the interest of Bulgaria’s young people in the recent past.
We dedicate this project to Bulgaria’s young people and to the victims of communism!
Coming soon
Coming in June – your opportunity to visit Belene and the site of the camp by selecting your tour guide and booking a date for your visit in advance.
Tsvetana Dzhermanova
4 years in labor camps
Offence: anarchist
Tsvetana Dzhermanova (1928-2024) was born on 20 March 1928. Tsvetana attended the primary school in the village of Leskovets and completed her middle school studies in the village of Batanovtsi.
She became interested in the ideas of anarchism in 1946. In 1948, she was arrested in a drive against
anarchists in Bulgaria and was sent to the forced labor camp in the village of Bosna, near the town of
Silistra. In December 1951, she was transferred to the women’s section of the Belene camp
(Shturcheto camp), where she remained until April 1952.
After her release from the camps, she was resettled a number of times. Tsvetana Dzhermanova passed away in 2024 at the age of 94.
Nikola Daskalov
8 months in the Belene camp
Offence: son of a provincial governor in the Kingdom of Bulgaria
Nikola Daskalov was born on 08 September 1934. His father, Dimitar Daskalov, was a provincial governor of Plovdiv.
Following the communists’ coming to power, Nikola’s father was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death.
He was executed by firing squad on 10 February 1945. Nikola and his mother were resettled away from Sofia. Later on, Nikola was sent to the Belene camp.
Kolyo Vutev
40 days in the Lovech camp
Offence: hooligan, son of a member of the opposition
Kolyo Vutev (1940-2022) was a wrestler and a wrestling coach), born on September 10, 1940, in the village of Toros, near Lukovit. He was interned, without trial or sentence, when he was only 18 years old, in the labor camp near Lovech, which was also known as Sunny Beach. The reason for his internment was his unruly nature for which he was considered a hooligan. It is likely that contributing factors for his internment were that, in the words of Kolyo himself, his father opposed the expropriation of the villagers’ property and the formation of the cooperative labor agricultural farms, while his grandfather had been a mayor of the village. Kolyo Vutev passed away in 2022 at the age of 82.
