The Union of Repressed Persons in Plovdiv commemorated all people who were killed and who went missing during the communist regime in the country by laying flowers at the monument “The witness”.

Today marks 77 years since the occupation of Bulgaria by the Soviet army which overthrew the legitimate government. The Union’s chair Atanas Uzunov described the date of the communist coup, 9 September, 1944, as the blackest day in modern Bulgarian history. He went on to say that after the communist coup the nation’s elite was destroyed, adding that young people should know this fact.

“In the space of just 40 days after this date 26,500 people were massacred – most of them without trial or jury, and a mock People’s Court was set up, whose aim was to cover the tracks of the pogroms committed, the organization emphasizes.