site.btaUPDATED BTA Director General: Bulgaria Should Put Signs in Places around the World Where Renown Bulgarians Have Left a Mark

Bulgaria should put signs around the world in places with traces of notable Bulgarians, Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) Director General Kiril Valchev said here on Sunday. He was speaking at the unveiling of a memorial plaque to Bulgarian poet Atanas Dalchev and his brother Lyubomir Dalchev at the Bulgarian Consulate General in Thessaloniki, their hometown. During the event, the June issue of the Bulgarian News Agency's LIK magazine, dedicated to Dalchev's 120th birth anniversary, was also presented.

"This is part of the protection and promotion of Bulgarian traditions and culture, as well as the provision of information about the lives of Bulgarians living outside the borders of Bulgaria - two principles on which the BTA Act obliges Bulgaria's national news agency to base its activities. For the national holiday on March 3 this year, BTA together with the Consulate General in Odesa placed a memorial plaque to Aleko Konstantinov at the Law Faculty of Odesa University, where Konstantinov graduated, on the occasion of his 160th birth anniversary. BTA dedicated an issue of LIK magazine to that anniversary as well, after organizing Aleko Today talks at the BTA national press clubs across Bulgaria throughout the past year. There are still many places in the world, such as Thessaloniki and Odesa, where the vicissitudes of history should not erase the traces of notable Bulgarians, because placing memorial signs for them can only make us closer to the countries where these places are," Valchev noted. 

In Valchev's words, the school keeps the memory of the traces of the Bulgarians around the world better than any paper or stone. That is why on the traditional date of the first day of school in Bulgaria, September 15, the issue of LIK magazine about Atanas Dalchev in Thessaloniki is presented and the memorial plaque to him and his brother Lyubomir Dalchev is unveiled at the Consulate General of Bulgaria in the city.

"It is the Bulgarian schools at all times everywhere in the world - including in Thessaloniki, from the former Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki, where Hristo Dalchev - the father of Atanas and Lyubomir Dalchev - was a teacher alongside Konstantin Velichkov, and Andrey Lyapchev, Gotse Delchev, Damyan Gruev, Ivan Mikhailov, and Todor Alexandrov were among its graduates, to the present Bulgarian Sunday School at the Bulgarian Zograf Monastery on Mount Athos - are the gateway to Bulgarian culture and especially to those artists like the Dalchevs who give a bird's eye view of what is valuable in life. Without the knowledge of them from the lessons in Bulgarian schools, where the 'undeveloped soul has always been strengthened', as said by Atanas Dalchev in Destiny, the children of Bulgarians would have become owners of Bulgaria like those owners of the house with the walled door to the balcony in Atanas Dalchev's poem The Balcony, who did not even suspect that their house had a balcony", said Valchev.

"That is why BTA started to consistently promote the activities of Bulgarian schools, including those around the world, in the special BG World column  with news from Bulgarians outside the borders of Bulgaria. And from this news we see every day how right Atanas Dalchev was in his poem To the Motherland, from which there is a couplet on the memorial plaque in Thessaloniki: that Bulgarians, regardless of when and in whose land they have been born, are united in one destiny", Valchev said. 

Poet and translator Atanas Dalchev was born in Thessaloniki on June 12, 1904. For his 120th birth anniversary this year, BTA published an issue of LIK magazine "In the Deep Footsteps of Atanas Dalchev", which has already been presented in Sofia, and on September 15, on the date of the traditional first day of school in Bulgaria - in his hometown. BTA and the Consulate General of Bulgaria in Thessaloniki together unveiled a memorial plaque for Atanas Dalchev and his brother, artist and sculptor Lyubomir Dalchev, born on December 27, 1902 in one of the then Bulgarian neighborhoods of Thessaloniki. Inscribed on the plaque is also the line from Atanas Dalchev's poem Cuckoo with his recollection of passing through Thessaloniki with his grandmother as a child.

Among those present at the event were also: Anton Markov, Consul General of Bulgaria in Thessaloniki; Victoria Dalcheva, daughter of Atanas Dalchev, and other members of the family; Prof. Huseyin Mevsim, professor of Bulgarian language and literature at Ankara University and author of the book Atanas Dalchev in Thessaloniki and Istanbul; Prof. Mihail Nedelchev, professor and researcher in theory and history of literature at New Bulgarian University in Sofia, editor of the two-volume book of Atanas Dalchev's works published by Bulgarian Writer in 1975, and author and editor of studies on the poet; Prof. Boyko Vassilev, journalist and presenter on Bulgarian National Television; Assoc. Prof. Georgi Lozanov, Editor-in-Chief of LIK magazine; and Irinei Konstantinov, actor with recordings of Atanas Dalchev's poems and Sofia Theatre Director.