MADJAROV –
THE TEACHER
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Georgi Madjarov was one of the most respected and beloved teachers in the two neighbouring village schools in Gorna Bela Rechka and Dolna Bela Rechka. Built in the 1930s with residents’ voluntary labour, both schools existed until the early 1960s.
The collectivisation of land, which in Northwestern Bulgaria was completed in 1957, and the burgeoning industrialisation of Bulgarian cities drove many families and young people away from the region. The number of children decreased dramatically, and the two villages were declared “settlements with declining functions”, which in the socialist nomenclature of the times meant they were dying out naturally.
At the beginning of 1955, the teacher Madjarov was dismissed from his job, for political reasons. On 24 May 1955, he ended his life.
24 May 1955 was a holiday [a traditional Bulgarian celebration of the Cyrillic Alphabet, of education and culture], and no one in the family anticipated the day would end tragically. In the morning, Georgi Madzharov and his wife Anna went to a nearby pine woods to gather firewood. At noon they returned, had lunch and went for an afternoon nap. Then Georgi heard the school fanfare band, which was playing on the occasion of the holiday, got up and went out. He had not come home by evening, and his wife went over to the neighbors to tell them he was missing. Together they went looking for him in different directions. He was found hanging from a cherry tree in a nearby woods. The neighbour who found him went mad.
The story was never passed on to the next generations. Madjarov had two sons, Dimitar and Boris, who at the time of the incident were fully grown up, both over 25 years old. A year later, one of them got married and had two sons, of which the first was named after his grandfather Georgi. The only detail of the family trauma that would reach Georgi Madjarov’s other grandson, Plamen, was the cherry tree.
What were the reasons for the firing of such a good teacher in 1955? We can only guess. There is nothing left in the collective memory, only speculations. Some Bela Rechens believe Madjarov had progressive ideas, sympathised with the opposition leader of the peasant movement Nikola Petkov, and did not support the collectivization of land. Nikola Mikhailov, 92 (recently deceased), from Gorna Bela Rechka, who was a friend and classmate of Madjarov’s son Boris, remembered that when the incident happened, he didn’t dare ask his friend anything because he was embarrassed.
Why did Madjarov choose the date of 24 May? Was this his last protest against the system? What occurred inside him, when he heard the holiday fanfare? We can only guess.
Based on oral accounts by Plamen Madjarov, Neli Madjarova, Nikola Mikhailov and Veneta Kostova, 2019
