Comment: | The Day of the Child, celebrated on the Messenger of Peace Sunday (the second Sunday after the Eastern Orthodox Easter) was introduced in 1927 by the Bulgarian Child Protection Union, whose first president was Prof. Dr. Stefan Vatev, the pioneer of Bulgarian paediatrics. Among the official guests on the stand are Queen Joanna (Giovanna) with her daughter Maria-Louisa and Bogdan Dimitrov Filov (1883 - 1945), a Bulgarian archaeologist, art historian, and politician. In 1937 Filov was elected chairman of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 1938 he became Minister of Education and in 1940 Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bulgaria. After the death of King Boris III in August 1943, Filov became a member of the Regency Council established due to the new Tsar, Simeon II, having been underage. After the new Communist-dominated government had been established in 1944, Giovanna and her children Simeon and Maria-Louisa remained under home arrest at Vrana Palace, near Sofia until 1946. In 1946 the government gave them 48 hours to leave the country, and they moved to Madrid. The members of the Regency Council were arrested. Filov and ninety-two other public officials were sentenced to death by a "People's Tribunal" on the afternoon of 1 February 1945. The sentence was revoked by the Bulgarian Supreme Court on 26 June 26 1996. |
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