1 - Justice in Mantle Coats: Shooting the Bulgarian People’s Courts in Revolutionary Times, 1944–1945

Summary

Sofia, December 26, 1944. Meeting Protocol, Secretariat of the Central Committee of the (Communist) Bulgarian Workers’ Party.

Agenda: The progress of the People’s Court and measures for eliminating its documented shortcomings.

Trajčo Kostov [Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party]: The court is not progressing fully satisfactorily. It is true that there are objective reasons for this: this is the first time that we have had a People’s Court and there was not enough time to prepare properly…. As a result, the preliminary investigations have been carried out inappropriately, with too few confessions and other materials that could support the accusations; the prosecutors themselves were not able to study the materials…. [The trial] should not stretch on and drag out until it exasperates everyone…. [T]he examination of wit-nesses will have to be accelerated…. There is too liberal behavior, especially on the part of the chief justice of the first chamber [Bodgan Šulev], toward the defendants…. If the prosecutor does not behave as he should, the chief justice should signal that to him…. The description of the trial proceedings in the newspapers will be improved. The journalists have been advised not to distract people’s attention by emphasizing the sensational aspects, but rather to emphasize the work of aiming to politically unmask [the defendants].

In the geopolitical matrix of the Second World War, Bulgaria occupied a unique position. Although it was a member of the Tripartite Pact (March 1, 1941) and an ally to Nazi Germany, the country refused to declare war on the USSR and send troops to fight on the Eastern front. Meanwhile, from April 1941 until October 1944, the country ruled by King Boris III occupied large segments of the kingdoms of Yugoslavia (most of Vardar Macedonia and the Serb region of Pirot) and Greece (Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia). In March 1943, following bilateral negotiations with the Germans, the Bulgarian authorities rounded up and deported an estimated 11,343 Jews— that is, nearly all the Jewish population residing in these territories—to Treblinka, where they were exterminated.