The Stranger

On a beautiful sunny day in August 2007 I received a letter. In the very beginning I thought it was nothing different from the hundreds of letters I have received since 2002, when I started my journalistic series to reunite divided families around the world. I did not imagine that this letter would give the beginning of one of the most fascinating stories in this series...

A German woman of Italian origin asked me for help in finding her grandfather. Actually she acted on behalf of her Italian father, his brother and their sister. Since I have not asked their permission to quote their names I will refer to them as the Italians.

These 3 Italians, who were in their 60's, have dreamed all their life of finding their Bulgarian father - who had disappeared mysteriously in 1968. All they knew was that after he divorced their Italian mother, he returned to Bulgaria, stayed there shortly and in 1968 escaped from there to France – and later to Canada. According to their research he left a second family with a small daughter behind in Bulgaria. They were in possession of an old telephone number and few old addresses, as well as the name of their father’s last wife in Bulgaria – Maria.

Did these people not know that “Maria” is a very common name in Bulgaria? Did they know that after the fall of Communism many of the old street names had changed and that the new telephone numbers had 7 instead of 5 digits?
 
Nevertheless, I decided to start the research. I have been always intrigued by cases where children are looking for their long-lost parents and have been researching their whereabouts earnestly. Of course I went to all the old addresses they provided me, knocked on all the doors which I found there, and asked all the people who opened these doors…

I perused all the old phone books and tried to guess how the old numbers could transform into the new ones – but it was all in vain.

So after 6-months of extensive research I decided that the only option was to read the classified documents which the father might have in the Bulgarian ex-Communist State Security files. I hoped that this would give me some insight and new details which eventually would help me to move ahead in this case.

I was right. The State security had formed a file for the father – as it did for all escapees from the Communist Gulag that Bulgaria was for many decades. In the file I discovered essential information which helped me to locate the address of his former residence and move further in my investigation.

I found the father’s second family in  Bulgaria's capital city, Sofia. It turned out that he left behind him not one but two children. His second wife, Maria, told me that they had looked for this man all their conscious lives – they tried through international phone books, Government officials, and the Red Cross – but in vain.

Having in mind that the father, if was alive, had to be 86 years old at the time of my research, I decided that a reunion of the 5 brothers and sisters who had never seen each other was truly enough of a happy and heartwarming story...a story that deserved to be published. They all planned to meet for first time in Piza. They were as thrilled and happy as I was.  I had almost forgotten my initial goal…

On the very same day of the publication of this story, I was called into the editorial office of 24 Hours Daily (where I have worked for the past 15 years) and was told that the man whose picture I had published and for whom I had searched for many months – the 86 year-old long lost father of the 5 siblings – had secretly visited Bulgaria 2 months ago. I was stunned.

The lady who telephoned the editorial office presented herself as friend of the long-lost father’s cousin, whom the old man had visited. She explained that during the visit the father insisted that the past was behind him and that he did not want to contact his relatives. He was with his latest wife and was very secretive of his whereabouts and reluctant to share details about his present life. The Bulgarian relatives only knew that he lived in Canada, but recently had sold his old house, had planned on buying a new one, and for this reason had no permanent address at the moment.

Obviously he had decided to visit Bulgaria secretly. Probably he was still afraid of being sentenced for his escape from the totalitarian Communist regime more than 40 years ago.

When I read his secret file I could not find any clear answers – did he really escape from Bulgaria, or was he „planted“ by the regime in the West? What could compel a man to forget his life, his wife (wives), his children, and his homeland?

The lady who called our offices recounted a detail which pushed me to continue my research. The father shared that he had celebrated his 86th birthday in a hotel in downtown Sofia – a hotel on one of the main Sofia streets. I decided to go to all the hotels on this street and ask about this mysterious guest…

Suddenly, in one of these hotels, I found that this man has stayed there in May. I was on the right track! Of course I asked for more details but was unpleasantly surprised to hear that he had not left any local or foreign address. Nevertheless, I was happy to notice in the hotel’s computer another small detail which would help me to go further in my investigation – the spelling of the father’s name was a little bit different from that which I had used in my search.

Going back to the editorial office I started a new search with the new spelling...and I found two ladies in France who had the same very rare family name. Who were they? Did they have any connection with the Bulgarian? I had no choice but to contact them and to ask...

I received their answer almost immediately. They replied to me with one question – who was I? Was I his daughter or another relative? I answered openly and honestly, as I always do when I am researching these types of cases. I informed them that I am a journalist in a leading Bulgarian daily who since 2002 has authored a series about reuniting lost family members all over the world. I explained that months ago I received a request from an Italian family to find their father in Bulgaria, that this had led to the discovery of another family - a wife and two children - related to this man, and that I had been researching this case for a long time.

Minutes later I was shocked to receive a fresh reply – these women were also daughters of the mysterious Bulgarian and had been trying to locate him for many years! They were overjoyed to find the 5 brothers and sisters they had in Italy, Bulgaria and Belgium, but were very disappointed to realize that their final goal – that of finding their father – was still eluding them.

Soon thereafter all seven children reunited in France to discuss their further strategy in the search for their father.

Suddenly, on a sunny March day, 18 months after I had started my work on this story, I received an e-mail from the German woman who had initially contacted me. She happily announced that her father – the first-born son of the long-lost Bulgarian man we had all been searching for – had just returned from Canada where he met, for first time after 62 years, his father. She also sent me a picture of this happy reunion.

This was the first instance since I have been a journalist – almost 25 years – where I decided to stop pursuing the answers I was looking for so desperately. This man was a victim of the fears of his time and he had obviously made a choice that he wanted to erase the past and never look back. Reflecting on his past was for him unbearably painful and heartrending – as it was for so many people who had dared to escape from Communism during this dark epoch. Or had he been a Bulgarian Secret Service agent all along?

This story made very clear to me that the victims of the consequences of life behind the Iron Curtain were more  numerous and their stories far more complex than I had ever expected – and I had to ask myself, how many families did the Iron Curtain tear apart? How many fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers have suffered? How many lives were destroyed or irreparably damaged? How many people have lived lives with burning, existential questions that have no answers?