August 28, 1943: King Boris III of Bulgaria Dies

King Boris III funeral in church of Rila Monastery. Members of the high clergy give their blessings to the deceased monarch. Rila Monastery, August 28. 1943 (BTA Archive)

Sofia,

28.08.2024 12:38

(BTA)

King Boris III of Bulgaria died 81 years ago today.

He was the eldest son of Ferdinand I. He ascended to the throne upon the abdication of his father in the wake of Bulgaria's defeat in World War I, and remained Bulgaria's monarch until his death in 1943.

He died of apparent heart failure on August 28, 1943 after returning to Sofia from a meeting with Hitler. The circumstances of his death remain controversial to this day.

Following a large and impressive State Funeral at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, where the streets were lined with weeping crowds, the coffin of King Boris III was taken by train to the mountains and buried in Bulgaria’s largest and most important monastery, the Rila Monastery, writes kingsimeon.bg. After taking power in September 1944, the Communist-dominated government had his body exhumed and secretly buried in the courtyard of the Vrana Palace near Sofia. At a later time the Communist authorities removed the zinc coffin from Vrana and moved it to a secret location, which remains unknown to this day. After the fall of communism, an excavation attempt was made at the Vrana Palace, in which only Boris's heart was found, as it had been put in a glass cylinder outside the coffin. The heart was taken by his widow in 1993 to Rila Monastery where it was reinterred

The underage Prince Simeon of Tarnovo succeeded his father the same day.

"A controversial character, a statesman of his time, King Boris III was one of the brightest political personalities not only on the Bulgarian but also on the Balkan horizon after WW I," Nikolai Poppetrov of the Institute for Historical Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences wrote in an article, marking the 80th anniversary of the monarch's death, published at www.dnevnik.bg. The author notes that Bulgarian public opinion still lacks consensus about Boris's role in history.

/NF/