Bulgaria Will Never Be The Same

Terror doesn't have two faces, or any more than that.

It has one face only – the face of death, horror, tragedy. To that, I would add pointlessness. Absolute pointlessness.

It is hard to understand how some people are able to kill other people. Innocent people who came to peaceful and welcoming Bulgaria to enjoy life. They came just like hundreds of thousands of their compatriots come every year precisely because Bulgaria is peaceful and welcoming; because for centuries Bulgarians, Jews, Turks, Armenians... have been living peacefully and happily here; they live in understanding and resolve together hard and easy things in life. But only when life does exist! For many of them, our brothers and sisters, life no longer exists. Dully, stupidly, incredibly, and inexplicably.

It is really just hard to believe.

40 years after the tragedy during the Munich Olympics, a tragedy that caught the attention of the entire world and became emblematic of the horror of terror against innocent victims, it has now been repeated in a more shocking, more inexplicable, more horrific way. It has now been repeated in Bulgaria.

Indeed, we can hardly realize right now what's happening. We will hardly be able to realize it in the days to come.

But one thing is for sure – in this entire economic and political mess, in this entire post-communist chaos, in the years of change of values, friendship, hunger, unemployment, sad and confused people... this now is the greatest tragedy that has happened in Bulgaria in the past at least 20 years.

Exactly Bulgaria, the country that made history with the fact that it saved its Jewish brothers and sisters from the death camps; exactly the Bulgarians who in all those years have proven a million times that they are above any sort of petty quarrel and conflict when they need to save a life, it is now precisely them that need to suffer together with the relatives of those killed. This is inhuman and abnormal.

There is nothing more savage, more inexplicable, and more shocking than terror. That is why Bulgaria will never be the same.

We will be more united, a lot more suffering, and – I hope – more sensible and cautious. So that we can prove that we are true Bulgarians, true patriots, and, as always over the years, to prove that we know how to lose, and how to turn losses into victories.

As... there is no greater victory in today's world than victory over terror.