Bulgaria Sets Aside Day to Honour Anti-Nazis

At its last meeting for the year on Wednesday, Bulgaria's outgoing government adopted a proposal to establish a commemoration day in honour of Bulgarians who fought against Nazi Germany. The proposal was submitted by the Defence Minister Nikolay Nenchev.

February 21 was chosen because on this day in 1941 members of the Bulgarian opposition met for the first time in the house of the leader of the former Democratic Party, Nikola Mushanov to oppose Bulgaria joining the Axis Powers.

"An annual payment of tribute to the opponents of Nazism will help to strengthen democratic values," the government noted in its decision.

The Defence Ministry proposal specified that the day would commemorate Bulgarians who actually fought the Nazis, not anti-Fascists in general.

After war in Europe erupted in September 1939, Tsar Boris III maintained Bulgaria's military neutrality, despite German and Italian pressure to  join the Tripartite Pact, until the end of February 1941.

But, fearing occupation by German troops located in Romania, which joined the Axis in November 1940, on March 1, Bulgaria signed a treaty joining Hitler's alliance.

Some historians have criticised the decision to designate a special day to honour opponents of the Nazi regime as pointless.

"This is nonsense. There was no such [anti-Nazi] movement in Bulgaria," Milen Semkov, а history professor at Sofia's Kliment Ohridski University and author of books on the Fascist and Communist regimes in Europe, told BIRN.

"Those were [just] sober-minded politicians, democrats who had a real assessment of the political situation and who feared the consequences for Bulgaria from joining such a union," he added.

According to Semkov, the opponents of Bulgaria's participation in...