The award-winning Bulgarian-Canadian scholar, filmmaker, and artist Professor Lilia Topouzova will present her new book Unsilencing at Between Bridges / Ursuppe in Berlin on 1 July at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:30 pm). The event will include a conversation with Kate Connolly (The Guardian) followed by a Q&A with the audience. Admission is free, but seating is limited. The event will be held in English.


Unsilencing provides the first comprehensive study of Bulgaria's forced-labor camps, a network of repression that operated throughout the communist era from 1945 to 1989. Lilia Topouzova uncovers the hidden histories of these camps, often referred to as Bulgaria's "Little Siberia," where thousands were interned without trial, subjected to inhumane conditions, and silenced for decades.

Drawing on two decades of archival research, oral history interviews with survivors and perpetrators, and an array of primary sources, Topouzova reconstructs the harrowing reality of life behind barbed wire. She explores how the communist regime systematically used these camps to suppress dissent, target minority groups, and instill fear across the population. Unsilencing presents detailed accounts of key sites like the Belene and Lovech camps, revealing the brutalities endured by prisoners and the lasting scars these places left on Bulgarian society.

More than a historical recounting, Unsilencing examines the post-1989 period and how Bulgaria has grappled—or often failed to grapple—with its recent past. Topouzova assesses the country's efforts at transitional justice, including the short-lived truth commission and trials that sought to hold perpetrators accountable. She argues that the legacy of the gulag has been largely forgotten and deliberately obscured, leaving a vacuum in Bulgaria's collective memory that continues to affect its society and politics today.


Professor Lilia Topouzova is Associate Professor of History and Creative Nonfiction at the University of Toronto. She is scriptwriter of The Mosquito Problem & Other Stories, writer and co-director of Saturnia, and the co-author of The Neighbours multimedia installation, which was showcased at the Venice Biennale. Her interdisciplinary work spans across academia and the visual arts, focusing on memory, trauma, and oral histories of state violence. Lilia Topouzova has also been selected as the winner of the John D. Bell 2025 Memorial Book Prize for this publication.

Kate Connolly is the Berlin correspondent for The Guardian. A foreign correspondent since 1996, she has reported widely across Europe and writes on European politics, society, and culture. She visited the sites and people chronicled in Unsilencing with Topouzova in 2024.