When Petko Ogoyski was released from communist Bulgaria’s gulag in 1953, he built a six-storey memorial tower in his home village of Chepintsi. Enraged by the lack of state recognition for the suffering he and thousands of others had endured, Ogoyski – who had been imprisoned for writing poems comparing Soviet rulers to Satan – filled it with artefacts redolent of detention and deprivation.
Two chunks of dried bread representing daily rations. A cloth harness used to move heavy stones in the quarry where prisoners were forced to work. A wooden clog with a hollowed-out heel, used for everything from holding pencils to smuggling notes out of the camp.
