ON THE BEACH/НА БРЕГА НА МОРЕТО

Despite considerable over development the beach at Sinemoretz is still one of the finest beaches on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast, stretching in a golden arch at the northern end of the little village, close to the Turkish border. The first time I visited Sinemoretz in 2001 there was a mere scattering of guest houses and a couple of small hotels. Now it has been infected with much of the overdevelopment and ill designed hotel complexes that have blighted so much of the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. The Bella Vista hotel complex that now overshadows the beach itself being a prime example of such development, illegally constructed and funded by, how can I put it, dubious sources. There is also another hotel in Sinemoretz and that is the Family Hotel Gogov.

During the summer of 2002 I spent a good deal of my time on Sinemoretz’s main beach, there are two; drinking cold beer in the beach bar, listening to music on my MP3 player, stretched out, soaking up the sun, wading into the sea to cool down. These count amongst the most pleasant days of my life. The beach was owned by the very same Mr Gogov, or to give him his full title Major Petur Gogov, former Camp Director of the Lovech concentration camp.[1]
Lovech was the last and harshest of the communist concentration camps,[2] it was also even more than the others a death camp, since so many who went through its gates were never to re-emerge. As described by ex-inmates every day at Lovech was a struggle against death, which came as a consequence of constant beatings, deliberate overwork in the nearby rock quarry, inadequate diet and medical facilities and deliberately as an act of punishment. Major Gogov is remembered as ‘a small cruel man….who used his stick freely.’[3] The prisoner here is not describing a gentle pat on the shoulder to draw your attention; many prisoners were beaten to death, either deliberately or incidentally, it did not really matter to those guarding them.
It is worth saying that you could be sent to Lovech for the most trivial or, from the communist state’s point of view, the most ‘serious’ of reasons.[4] No trial was required.
Major Gogov was an equal opportunities sadist; described by one of the woman he beat as being in possession of a specially grooved club with which he beat her. There were a great many deaths during the Majors management of the camp; some were suicides, inmates no longer able to stand the daily beatings and the ever present threat of violent death. One example reported by several inmates stands out.

“We had unloaded the umpteenth train. The bell had already started to sound, signalling for us to step away. We all did so, with the exception of Ivan Khinkov of Pleven. He threw himself under the wheels of the train. A recent arrival at the camp he was either eighteen or nineteen years old. The train stopped and Ivan was pulled out, but without his two legs. However the boy was still alive. Gogov and Gazdov began to howl like maniacs. How dare this bastard make a mess of the work schedule……..Levordashki lifted the [huge rock breaking hammer] hammer and brought it down on Ivan’s chest. Gogov and Gazdov sighed with relief.”[5]

The Major could have enjoyed a decent career in the Third Reich.

This incident was merely one among so very many, for “Death walked amongst us and could pay a visit at any time.”[6]
We now know how the Major spent the twilight of his years, his life, representative as it is of so many who committed crimes against humanity across former communist bloc countries, now members of the EU, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. As I write this I no longer know if the Major is alive or dead. Certainly when I, unwittingly,[7] lay on his beach he was very much alive, though his son was slowly taking over the reigns. It is possible now that his son now runs the hotel. Should the sins of the father be visited on his son? Does the son have an accurate picture of the crimes of his father? I’m not sure that I care that much. I only know that the idea of The Family Hotel Gogov is truly grotesque, almost as grotesque as a Beach Hotel Stangl.[8] Though should you ever visit Sinemoretz you might like to pay the hotel a visit to lay a wreath, or stop for a few moments in silence to remember Major Gogov’s victims, who will never know what it is to lie in the sunshine, untroubled, on the beach.

*http://www.hotelgogov.com/sinemorets.html

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[1] In 1990, the Bulgarian Communist Party set up an inquiry commission into the camps. It found that between 1944 and 1962 there were approximately 100 forced labour camps in a country of 8 million inhabitants. Between 1944 and 1953, some 12,000 men and women passed through these camps, with an additional 5,000 between 1956 and 1962. According to one witness, Belene alone held 7,000 in 1952. Other estimates a total of 186,000 prisoners during this period. Definitive figures remain elusive.  

[2] Taken from ‘Voices from the Gulag, Life and death in Communist Bulgaria, Tzvetan Todorov Penn State Press 1999.

[3] Ibid. p68

[4] The intensity of state repression varied during these years. A Politburo decision in 1962 said that an individual could be imprisoned and assigned to forced labour without a court trial. Repression in this period was of an administrative rather than political nature, targeting those accused of "social parasitism" or "loose morals", often with information given by "people's organisations" such as the Fatherland Front's neighbourhood sections. One woman ended up being murdered in Lovech after her ex-husband accused her of anti state crimes as a means to gain access to her two room apartment. http://www.rtbot.net/Forced_labour_camps_in_Communist_Bulgaria

^[5]

[edit]

[5] Ibid. p89.

[6] Ibid. p88

[7] I heard that he had a dark past as a communist apparatchik, though this was hardly unusual in post communist Bulgaria.

[8] Camp commandant Treblinka

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