This smoke stack was not, as far as I know, part of a concentration camp. but when I saw it I wondered about it.
On the CBC radio show Ideas, Nahlah Ayed also interviewed Krasmina Butseva, a visual artist, researcher and a senior lecturer at the University of the Arts, London. She was another member of the team working on The Neighbours as a response to the Bulgarian Gulag. She explained what happened when the installation was first staged for the first time in Sofia, Bulgaria. Most of the people who visited it spent the most time in the kitchen. That really felt like home to them.
The Bulgarian gulag functioned between 1945 and 1962, primarily. But it was never completely closed.
The Bulgarian gulag was modelled on the Soviet gulag. It’s the same kind of principle. People are sent to a forced labor camp without a trial, without a sentence. They were sent indefinitely in other words. Bulgaria became known after 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as “little Siberia.”
And the living conditions were excruciating. There was forced labor, there were hardships, there was disease, starvation. And of course, in some cases death. Not systemic murder as in Nazi Germany but many perished in the horrid conditions of the Bulgarian camps.
It’s a very painful experience. Bulgaria is a country of about 7 million people, 110,000 square kilometers. There were about 40 forced labor camp complexes in Bulgaria, so about 80 individual sites. I was shocked by the number.
Krasmina Butseva explained that forced labour occurred entirely without trials. Once Bulgaria was absorbed into the Soviet Block the country was quickly Stalinized and that meant extra-judicial internment and severe repression. Authoritarians always see courts and law as an unnecessary restraint. Usually, it meant no specific sentence. They were imprisoned at the pleasure of the regime until shadowy officials decided the prisoner could be released usually without explanation. Absolute power never has to explain.
The first question of course, is who were these people who were sent to the Gulags of Bulgaria? According to Butseva, the inmates were “enemies. Perceived enemies, alleged enemies. But there are many different categories.” In most cases the victims were part of the left in Bulgaria. Political dissidents on the non-Communist left. You might have thought a communist regime would pick on the right, but that is not how it worked. They imprisoned more on the left. That shows me what I always thought, the communist were more fascists than socialists.
Others victims included social democrats, anarchists, members of the agrarian party. Often Trotskyites, and in time other Communists who fell out favor with the party. The regime protected their own so long as they remained loyal to those in control of the party. Again, as we are learning in North American political leaders with an authoritarian bent value nothing more than loyalty. Next, some of the victims who were “invited to stay” included peasants who lived on the land and became “enemies” if they no longer supported those in control. Their defiance made them “enemies.” If they refused to give up their farms to the collective, they became enemies. Rebels could not be tolerated.
Non-conformists were also enemies. These were people who defied social norms and included men who let their hair grow long, listened to western music, liked dancing. Young girls often wore miniskirts and included those who wore hair styles the party elite did not favor. They were seen as political opponents. Then there were ethnic “enemies” like Muslims and Roma people.
Butseva explained that the last wave of Muslim and Roma were sent to the gulag between 1984 and 1987 when communist Bulgaria interned about 500 Muslim men to the camp for forced labour. They used many camps but the one used the most was called Belene Island located in the Danube River. Unfortunately, I never got to see it. The organizers did not think tourists would be interested in former concentration camps, or more likely, the current government did not want to talk about the camps.
One thing surprised me. This is what Lilia Topouzova said about it:
“When you visit the site of the former camp, this beautiful island, Belene Island, on the Danube between Bulgaria and Romania, I mean, it’s a striking place. It’s a beautiful, beautiful place. And the sound of it is beautiful as well.”
I love beautiful islands, but I this one I did not get to see, or even hear about.
The communist government of Bulgaria used camp internment to get rid of opponents when they were not able to use traditional judicial means because they could not charge them with ordinary crimes. For example, if they could not find sufficient evidence to charge them in the criminal system, they could intern them without the inconvenience of a trial. If people did nothing wrong, the regime could use that process to punish or control them anyway. That’s how autocracies work. And around the world it seems government are turning in that direction. Not good.
Some people are bored with history. I think its important to learn about things like concentration camps, even though they were unpleasant and we were on a holiday, but I hope if we learn more we won’t make such mistakes again.