Category Archives: Truth Seeking

Love of Country in Bulgaria, Canada, or the United States

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Abuse of Power, Bulgaria, Concentration Camps, Death of Truth, History, Social Justice, Truth Seeking

It was at the University of Toronto that Lilia Topouzova and her colleagues Julian Shehirian and Krasmira Butsova, recreated spaces from a Bulgarian home and turned them into an immersive audio installation where Concentration camp survivors’ voices and their silences could live on. Their installation is called The Neighbors. It was the official Bulgarian entry to the 2024 Venice Biennale. That showed that Bulgaria was now dealing with this issue, after decades of silence. We heard small snippets from the audio in the CBC Ideas radio show. In the autumn of 2023 it had its North American debut in a small room on the campus of the University of Toronto.

The room is based on 20 years of research that Topouzova and her eventual interviews with survivors. The original project was done in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Julian Chakurian, was a partner in the project. She is a historian in training doing a PhD in the history of science at Princeton university and also is a multimedia artist with an interest in archives and expositions of what she called “wayward histories.” Too many stories have been lost. Gone for good.

This is what she said about her recordings of the survivors:

 “Based on the oral histories that I recorded, there were three categories of Camp Survivor narratives. There were the narratives of the people who had always told their story. There were very few of them, but these are the kind of practiced narrators. That was one way of remembering the Gulag. The second way of remembering the Gulag were people who still had memories of their experiences, but they had never told them before. Some people had never shared their story, because usually nobody asked them, but they remembered everything, and they usually had chronicles of their experiences, little notes that they had taken down.    And the third category, and that is the most painful category, is of those who couldn’t speak. There was no language. There were no words.”

 

This was a very disturbing description of the survivors in this last category.  One can only imagine the suffering that spawned their condition. As a result, this is what the 3 researchers did:

 

“I knew they had been sent to camps. I could see many of them had their files, but they couldn’t express. Based on these three categories that emerged from the oral histories from the scholarly research, we decided to recreate three different rooms to illustrate the different ways of remembering trauma.”

 

Again, I want to bring this into the modern political arena even though that might be uncomfortable to some privileged Canadians or Americans or their offspring. Imposed silence is definitely not golden.  Nor should the survivors be maliciously misrepresented as people who are maligning their country, as Donald Trump and the Trumpsters are doing in American with their American descendants of enslaved people, and indigenous people. Or women who experienced sexual assaults or violence or systemic racism in that country. Or Canada. Or members of the LGBTQ community,  who have suffered systemic injustice and discrimination for decades. It is a horrible defamation of their suffering by  a privileged sector of their society who call them haters of their country. And again, we have similar men in our country as well. Men who want to hide the truth. We even have women who want to hide the truth.

 

Try to bring the truth out of darkness into light is not an act of hate against one’s country. Trying to get your country to recognize what happened there and admit that is an act of love. That is not hate. If you want to hide the truth of what happened in your country from its people, or others,  that is an act of hate. If you love your country you would never do that.

 

The Sounds of their Silent Memories: Lilia Topouzova

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Bulgaria, Concentration Camps, Death of Truth, History, Truth Seeking

During the Communist era in Bulgaria from 1946 to 1989 there was little room for political dissent. Protesters, anyone who opposed the government, could be arrested, sent to the Gulag, and silenced. Silence was often the point.  The powerful members of the Communist party brooked no public dissent in order to preserve their authority. They wanted silence. They demanded silence. And some of the victims, even after the regime was dismantled, had nothing left to offer other than silence. It was if they had lost the capacity to speak.

 

This really proved the truth of what the  Czechoslovakian writer Milan Kundera once said:

 

 

The CBC radio show Ideas, described the work of Lilia Topouzova this way:

 

For 20 years, Lilia Topouzova has been collecting the stories of those who survived: some had many stories, some had little to say, some had nothing to say — or just no way of saying it. From these eloquent stories she has recreated a Bulgarian room from the Communist era, where her meetings and conversations with survivors can be heard, a space about the absence of memory and what that does to a people, a space to bear witness to those who were sent to the camps, but who were everyone’s friends, relatives and neighbours. The installation The Neighbours is the official Bulgarian entry to the 2024 Venice Biennale.|

Bulgaria has at long last come to own the history of Bulgaria. As a filmmaker, Lilia naturally employs sounds to tell her stories, but this was difficult because many of the survivors did not want to be heard or seen, and neither did the new regime in Bulgaria.  How then to tell their story respectfully?  That was the challenge of her and her team.  She concluded that “this story was fundamentally about sound, about whispers, about hesitation, and the sound of a room where someone simply cannot speak. “She has spent more than two decades studying the Bulgarian Gulag, excavating a history that has been deliberately silenced.”

 

Obviously, that was a very difficult task.  Bringing this story up to our times, it is a stark reminder, that when the forces of darkness try to muzzle the truth, or hide the truth, or even, destroy the truth, as many are doing around the world, even in the United States, much to our current surprise, we must all realize that if those dark forces are allowed to be successful any later job of restoration will be extremely difficult. Whether in Bulgaria, the United States or Canada, for that reason, we must be vigilant to resist those powers of darkness, even if it is challenging.

 

As the CBC Ideas host Nahlah Ayed said, “Lilia is fascinated by what lives inside silence.”  By that she meant inside both the silence of survivors and the authorities. The victims often came to visit Topouzova, but then did not speak. They kept silent, because it was uncomfortable for them to speak about the horrors they had experienced.  Sometimes they came to see her with their files but could not speak.

 

I was struck by the similarities to what survivors of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools said. They too were often reluctant to speak. Who can blame them? Dredging up painful incidents and practices is never easy. Sometimes silence seems like the only bearable response. We must respect those survivors who are brave enough and strong enough to speak, for only by hearing those words can the rest of us learn about what happened. And we need to learn what happened so that we never let it happen again. We must cherish those who are able to speak, for the benefits they bestow upon us.

 

Topouzova said,

 

“They didn’t want to talk to me about the camp. They wanted to talk to me about the weather, about Canada. I was also beginning to recognize that the camps are a kind of a present absence.”

 

It is hardly surprising, under such circumstances, how difficult it is to bring to the light such horrible events. The camps were truly chambers of horror. Consequently, Topouzova said this about the camps,

“Everybody knows they existed. Nobody wants to talk about them, at least directly. So, I’ve had conversations with people about ordinary things, like the weather and mosquitoes, for instance.”

 

In some cases it took years for victims to speak. That’s how horrible the experience was. We must be grateful to them for sharing.

 

Silence is not Golden

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Concentration Camps, Death of Truth, History, Modern History, Truth Seeking

 

 

This island in the Danube River was benign. Other islands were not that.

Right in the middle of the Danube River, on an idyllic island the main Bulgarian concentration camp was located. That island was called Belene  and it was the main forced labour camp of  a network of concentration camps in Bulgaria  that now is largely ignored by the current government, even though it is no longer a communist government. That struck me as odd. Why the silence?

 

No one mentioned it to me on our cruise either. No one mentioned it on any of our excursions. It was as if it never happened.

 

According to Lillia Topouzova, “Very clearly the [Bulgarian Interior ] minister said, Belene should vanish as a symbol of the repressive system.”

 

No one wanted to be reminded what happened there. Even the victims were not keen on bringing up painful memories. At least, at first. Topouzova on the other hand, was very interested in the silence of both oppressors and oppressed and everyone else in between. She respected the silence of the victims. And she was very patient. As she said,

 

“There was no language. There were no words. I knew they had been sent to camps. I could see many of them had their files, but they couldn’t express. And the silence of those who lived near the camps, but learned to never acknowledge their existence. They didn’t want to talk to me about the camp. They wanted to talk to me about the weather, about Canada. I was also beginning to recognize that the camps are a kind of a present absence. Everybody knows they existed. Nobody wants to talk about them, at least directly. So I’ve had conversations with people about ordinary things, like the weather and mosquitoes, for instance.”

 

It was hardly surprising that I had never heard of the Bulgarian Gulag. It was no accident. It was deliberately kept a secret supposedly to protect the Bulgarian society’s reputation, but really to protect the reputations of the powerful. Now I really want to see them. I knew we would sail very close to the island where one of the main camps was located.

 

But Lilia Topouzova, and her two fellow researchers, were determined to ferret out the truth and bring what really happened into the light of day, but only if that met with the approval of the victims she interviewed. She worked very hard to respect their wishes.

 

It took her 20 years to amass the story. That was the sound of silence. And it was not golden, but it was fruitful.

 

History is Important

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Critical thinking, Death of Truth, History, Indigenous People After Contact, Truth Seeking

 

 

I believe there is a lot to be learned from history.   And much history can be learned from travel. History teaches us the truth about the past. At least it always tries to find the truth. Sometimes that truth lies underneath decades or even centuries of obfuscations or outright propagandist lies. Those lies were designed to obscure uncomfortable truths.  I want to face those truths; not escape from them.

Barbara Huck’s book has helped to do that and it has enriched our journey.  Huck made some very interesting comments about our Canadian history. As she explained,

Today, on the cusp of a new millennium, North Americans have more tools than ever before for travelling through time. Thanks to new technologies and new perspectives, we are well equipped to imagine life five thousand or five million years ago. We can contemplate doing blood tests on the body of  an ancient trader found high on an Alpine pass or cloning a woolly mammoth in China. Yet for the most part, an appreciation of life here just 500 years ago eludes us.

 

I did not want to elude that story. I wanted to approach that history on this journey.  I think it is important.

History is important because the truth is important. Nowadays a lot of people don’t want old monuments to be taken down.  Some say that is erasing history. I disagree. Paying homage to old statues, or refusing to critique history is to erase history. Many people don’t want to look at our past history because it might make them uncomfortable.  They prefer self-satisfying illusions.  Personally, I would rather be disturbed in my comfortable pew than sit there in ignorance ignoring the truth. If the truth is not challenging its probably not the truth.

 

 

To know the future you must know the past

civilization, Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

Both libraries and archives have an inevitable leaning towards the future. They preserve the past for the benefit of the future. As Richard Ovenden said,

“Every collection, every library is actually about the future. Every archival institution is about the future. How can we know where we are going unless we know where we are from. How can we chart a path to the future without thinking of where we are from?”

 

We need the knowledge of the past in order to look at the past societies with fresh eyes and new ideas and to inspire the future and protect the path to the best future.

As John Stuart Mill so wisely told us, we cannot hold a valid opinion unless we allow it to be challenged. We must permit all ideas to be challenged. Even our most sacred beliefs must be challenged or those beliefs will wither. This is for our benefit and for the benefit of the future. We must consider  and reflect on opposing views. We must not hide them in closets. We do our children no favours if we protect them from contrary views. Their own views will become stunted and weak without challenge. Coddling them from uncomfortable views as so many conservatives, like those in Florida, now want to do, is doing a great disservice to the next generation. Few things help us challenge our own views better than reading the strongest of the challenges to those views.

Where better to go for that than a library?

 

A Champion for Freedom

civilization, Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

John Stuart Mill was the author of On Liberty and a champion, perhaps the greatest champion, of freedom of thought and expression. Richard Ovenden in his lecture at the Toronto Library took note of one of his famous ideas: namely John Stuart Mill’s insistence in On Liberty, that only through the diversity of opinion is there in the existing state of human intellect the chance of fair play to all sides of the truth.”  Often this seems hopelessly optimistic in this day of increasing polarization and decreasing tolerance for a diversity of ideas, but it is still the main hope for lovers of freedom of thought and expression.  Frankly, I have found no better idea.

Societies have a hard time achieving this goal. How can libraries then do it too? Richard Ovenden thought they could be up to that task. He pointed out that it is a fundamental aspect of their role. Libraries work in collaboration with each other and work within networks with each other. They have allies in their momentous task. They can do it! Often if you need to read something they don’t have in their own collection they are quite willing to help you to find it elsewhere and bring it to you.

Libraries take very seriously their job of serving their communities, Ovenden said. And I know this from my own decade of serving on a local library board. The people their love to serve the needs of their reading public. And they are darn good at it.

As Ovenden said,

“What gives us pleasure at the end of the day is thinking that they have helped someone solve a problem or better understanding of some issue. That task is entirely possible and we need to support those institutions and the individuals who work in them and give them the freedom to do that job.”

And they are darn good at it. They can do it if we just give them a chance. And it is one of the most important jobs there is.

 

 

Libraries as temples

civilization, Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

 

Richard Ovenden talked about excavations in ancient communities in Iraq and Syria of which I was not aware. He said that in ancient places, librarians often worked in temples!  5,000 years ago, librarians catalogued books. They had clay tablets of course rather than paper bound books, but they worked  in temples. He said “the librarians and archivists were priests!”

 In the France during the Middle Ages, the French national archives, the Trésor des Chartre,  were located in Sainte Chapelle. Only sacred chapels or cathedrals were good enough for libraries. That is how important they were considered. The archives were considered so precious they had sacred connotations.  We have lost some of that reverence  for libraries, for sure since then. Perhaps this is a sign of the decay of civilization in fact.

In the digital age we are surrounded by facts or false facts but libraries are hardly considered precious or sacred. Those days are largely gone. What a shame.

Nowadays, knowledge is abundant but still, we must never forget, fragile and can be easily disrupted disturbed or even maligned. We see that all around us.

It wasn’t long ago that the idea of librarians spending time on going through long lists of books for potential banning or “correction,” as happened in Florida, would have been considered ludicrous. Today it is rather a sad reality. Sometimes, I think, we live in the age of barbarians, or at best, the age of fools.

We have taken ancient liberties—such as the freedom to read or the freedom to think—for granted. To see them besmirched as they have been is deeply disturbing. Is there any chance that there can be galvanizing forces to buck up our resistance to tyranny? Or are these incidents or premonitions of our civilizational decline?

Libraries are truly treasures whether national, regional or local. We must learn again to understand that.

Librarians as Warriors

Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

It is a sad fact that librarians have become warriors. Soldiers for truth. They do that just by the fact of their job which is to preserve and disseminate knowledge.  But libraries have been under attack for quite some time. That forces librarians into battle and bravely and happily librarians have usually been up to the task. They are frequently courageous  and competent foot soldiers.

 

Some libraries in Florida were recently closed so that staff can go through their entire stock of books and materials to ensure that they are complying with the new laws. They need to make sure that they comply with the censorship laws brought in by Ron DeSantis and his cultural warriors of censorship. The staff have no choice. Often, they don’t want to do that, but by law they must. As a result, instead of working hard to make reading materials available to their members they are working hard to ensure the materials are not available.

Librarians have been forced to go through tens of thousands of books to make sure they are acceptable. That is a travesty of their function. Those who require it are part of a basket of deplorables to enlist a phrase with a checkered past.

As Richard Ovenden said, “The idea that libraries are engaged in serious matters for the good of society needs to be shouted out.” They are not dusty old places overseen by ancient schoolmarms. They are places of battle, The battle for civilization. Nothing less.