Zhivkov Blamed for Deaths at 2 Concentration Camps

A former Bulgarian Cabinet minister has blamed ousted Communist leader Todor Zhivkov for scores of deaths at two concentration camps, the Douma newspaper reported today.

In an interview with the newspaper, former Interior Minister Georgi Tsankov said Zhivkov had proposed setting up forced labor camps at Lovech and Skravena to fight rising crime in the late 1950s.

A commission of inquiry said Tuesday that 147 of the 1,235 inmates died during the years the camps operated between 1959 and 1962, mainly because of beatings and “personal torment.” It referred to them for the first time as concentration camps.

Douma, a newspaper of the ruling Socialist Party, quoted Tsankov as saying Zhivkov had visited women prisoners at Skravena and described them as “weeds which must be uprooted.”

“Everyone knows that he went everywhere accompanied by his entourage. They heard what the No. 1 said and, as it is also known, some people always took his words to be an order,” Tsankov said.

“That is the cause for the abuses not only in Lovech and Skravena but in all prisons even to the present day,” he said.

Tsankov, interior minister from 1951 to 1962, was named by the commission as one of the officials responsible for crimes at the camps. He denied involvement.

Zhivkov, 78, was ousted after 35 years of hard-line Communist rule last November in an internal party coup and is being investigated for alleged abuses of power.