A glance back to an atrocious past with a vision of today and tomorrow

by Prof. Dr. Miroslav Popov, MD

Dear reader,

You will go through a list of 618 names of colleagues of ours - medical doctors and students of medicine, who were subjected to various forms of repression by the communist regime in the 1945s after the 9th of September 1944. Out of the 618 on the list, 45 were either murdered, or went missing, 71 were kept in prisons, and 86 medical doctors were kept in concentration camps. The rest underwent various forms of repression: they were either expelled from the Medical School, or dismissed from their jobs, or deported or internally displaced, or their professional growth was impaired.

I know personally a number of all those colleagues (some of them were my co-students), and I have heard about others from their relatives and friends, who shared the same fate. I have witnessed many of the described events. And I can honestly say that none of the people, whom I know or know about, deserved the kind of life assigned to them by the communist terror after September 9, 1944.

The above mentioned colleagues of ours became the victims of the systematic extermination and obliteration of the enormous at that time portion of the Bulgarian nation's intellectual potential, who did not believe in and did not accept the Bolshevik norms of society and state. The smashing of that potential, a considerable part of which were doctors of medicine, is reproducing even nowadays its negative effects on the nation.

This book, edited by Prof. Dr. Kiril Milenkov, MD, is the result of a long research. Documentary sources and papers were used, which ensured the precision of facts. The book is published by the organization, which bears the moral obligation for and right over it, namely the Bulgarian Medical Association; the latter as a body was also subjected to repression, and later abolished after September 9, 1944.

The Bulgarian medical professionals owe to the editor and authors heartfelt and most sincere gratitude!

To those repressed under the swing of the Bolshevik terror we owe everlasting reverence and respect, and the names of those murdered and missing shall be kept in our memory, and we shall pray to God to give them shelter close to Himself.

This book, however, should not be viewed as a list of names. It is meant, indeed, to keep alive the memory of what happened to the Bulgarian medical professionals in the above-mentioned days, months and years. It is not meant to lay accusations or call to revenge. However, it is set to give us wisdom and strength, and to invoke such an attitude among us so as not to allow again for the genocide of Bulgarian medical professionals and of a large portion of the intellectual potential of the Bulgarian nation. History needs to be written and studied with a vision of today and tomorrow.

We should consider this book as one laying a beginning. Research work in this area should continue now that the present book has already opened the first door to it. Therefore, the book will undoubtedly be of use to medical professionals, sociologists, and writers, who will revive and further elaborate what has been produced by now.

Thus also the unshakable spiritual monument will also be built to those medical professionals, who lost their lives, whose fates were bent, who were humiliated so as not to serve progress, truth and good.

Bulgarian doctors and students of medicine - victims of the communist terror of 1944-1989, Sofia 2003, Edited by Prof.Dr. Kiril Milenkov, MD; Authors: Prof.Dr. Kiril Milenkov MD, Dr. Nikolay Predov, Dr. Tsvetan Gaydarov, Prof. Dr. Dimitar Kozarov MD, Dr. Metodi Madzharov, Dr. Milko Roussev; Involved in the data collection were: Prof. Dr. George Markov MD, Mr. Zachary Fournadzhiev, Mr. Petko Ogoyski, Prof. Dr. Mikhail Ognyanov MD, Dr. Yonka Douchevska, Prof. Dr. Petar Pomakov and many others whose collaboration is acknowledged with thanks.