Angel Wagenstein returned to Bulgaria due to an amnesty, and as a student at a lyceum, where he joined an anti-fascist group.

After a combat mission, he was arrested and condemned to death in 1944, but the execution was first delayed by the Anglo-American bombing of Sofia, which destroyed parts of the prison and forced the relocation of the inmates to another facility, and then prevented by the anti-fascist (mostly Communist) takeover and the roughly simultaneous invasion of the Soviet Red Army.

[2] His fiction includes the triptych Петокнижие Исааково (Isaac's Torah), Далеч от Толедо (Far from Toledo) and Сбогом, Шанхай (Farewell, Shanghai), which have been published both separately and together not only in Bulgarian but also in French, German, Russian, English, Czech, Polish, Macedonian, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew.

He is also the bearer of the highest Bulgarian distinction – the Stara Planina Order.

A documentary film about his life, Angel Wagenstein: Art Is a Weapon, was produced by American director Andrea Simon in 2017 and won the Audience Award at the South East European Film Festival.