Today is the Day of Remembrance and Respect to Victims of the Communist Regime. On this date, February 1^st, in 1945, the so-called “People's Court” (Naroden Sad) sentenced regents, deputies, ministers, officers and members of the public to death, and the sentences were carried out on the same day.

In Sofia, dozens of citizens and representatives of political formations traditionally gather in front of the chapel and the memorial wall next to the National Palace of Culture to lay wreaths and flowers and attend a prayer service. The chairman of the National Assembly Nikola Minchev is also expected to attend the ceremony.

In Lovech, the memory of the victims will be honored at the stone quarry near the town, where the “Sunny Beach” (Slanchev Bryag) concentration camp is located, which existed from 1959 to 1961 after the closure of the Belene camp.

The Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communism - February 1, is celebrated in Bulgaria for the 11th consecutive year after it was established on the initiative of Presidents Zhelyo Zhelev and Petar Stoyanov.

“The commemoration preserves the memory of past dark times, which should never be repeated,” Prime Minister Kiril Petkov wrote on the government's Facebook profile today.

“Bulgaria is already on the right track and it is our duty to work every day to make our country democratic, where the rule of law is of highest importance, free from corruption and prosperous, the Prime Minister wrote.”

President Rumen Radev paid tribute to the memory of the victims of the communist regime in Bulgaria.

“It is high time we stopped dividing those who died for Bulgaria into 'our own' and 'foreign' and it is our duty to honor the memory of every innocent victim of every regime,” the president wrote on his Facebook account. In it, Rumen Radev emphasizes that “it depends on our actions to heal the wounds of division so that the tragedies that marked our history will never be repeated.”

/BNR

We will never forget! We will never forgive!

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