Reclaiming a Memory: An Inquiry Into the Bulgarian Camp Past

This work examines the untold story of the Bulgarian gulag. While it does not provide a full history of the forced-labour camps, it suggests some of the possible parameters of such study and provides one possible introduction to this topic. Recently declassified documents from the former Secret Police, archival collections, interviews with survivors, ex-guards and functionaries of the camp system are considered together with existing references about the Bulgarian camps: memoir literature, documentary films, online resources, legislative reforms, and academic initiatives. The archival documents and personal narratives paint a complex picture of a traumatic past that is yet to faced. This study is aimed at capturing the attempts to retrieve the lost identity of the camp narrative outside of an ideologically burdened interpretative framework.