In an address on the Day of Thrace, President Iliana Iotova paid tribute to generations of awakeners and revolutionaries, the Siege of Adrianople and the victorious Bulgarian arm, the President’s press secretariat said on Thursday.
Iotova said: “We relive the terrible summer of 1913 and the upheavals of the long and merciless 20th century. The memory comes alive of endless columns of refugees, of devastated family homes and abandoned fields, of the ruthlessly erased Bulgarian presence in native Thrace.”
In her words, the Thracian Bulgarians are a measure of dignity and nobility. “From their hard-won historical wisdom, we draw the lesson that reconciliation and forgiveness are the only path to lasting peace, understanding and a better future for our children,” she said.
Iotova said that every year on March 26, Thracians honour their brave forebears, issue a call for justice and raise their voices against oblivion. “Though uprooted from their land, in their hearts our forefathers never left the Aegean. They did not allow the invisible bond with their ancestral homes to be broken, nor did they abandon the hope that, sooner or later, their longing for justice would be fulfilled.”
The President thanked the Union of Thracian Societies in Bulgaria chaired by Krasimir Premyanov for its untiring efforts to keep the Thracian cause alive.
The Day of Thrace has been observed on the initiative of the Union of Thracian Societies in Bulgaria and by a Council of Ministers decree dated March 23, 2006. On this day, the heroism of Bulgarian soldiers who died near Adrianople is commemorated, along with the memory of thousands of Thracian refugees.
The Day of Thrace is celebrated on the day of the Bulgarian army’s victory at Adrianople in 1913. After nearly six months of siege and 24-hour non-stop attack, the impregnable fortress of Adrianople fell. Its conquest achieved military-political and strategic results that led to the end of the First Balkan War.
/RY/