Belene labour camp

At the height of Valko Chervenkov's repressions in 1952, the camp had 2,323 inmates - 2,248 men and 75 women.

During those years, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation broadcast a series named "Belene Adası" (Belene Island) on the policies of the Bulgarian government against Bulgarian Turks.

From 1949 onward, Evangelical Christian pastors in particular were targeted as "enemies of the State" and sent to Belene.

Haralan Popov, who survived and later founded the mission "Door of Hope International" to bring Bibles behind the Iron Curtain, published his autobiography under the Bulgarian title "The Bulgarian Golgotha".

The camp and some its survivors were the subject of a documentary film by German TV program ZDF Vorwärts aber nie vergessen - Ballade über bulgarische Helden "Moving on, but Never Forgetting - A Ballad of Bulgarian Heroes" directed and authored by Ilija Trojanow.