Germany

The german portion of Dimitrov’s diary, written in Nazi detention from 9 March 1933 to 28 February 1934, is extremely dry and elliptical, and occasionally obscure. Dimitrov was well aware that his jottings would be subject to examination by his captors. Hence the notes have the character of a bare record—of a chronology that can be elaborated, if necessary, containing important reminders that could be useful in his battle of will with the Nazis. The diary begins with his arrest, early encounters with the investigating magistrates, and a shrewd record of Nazi thoughts on objectivity (an obstacle in the war against national enemies), the necessity of serving “national thinking” (der nationale Gedanke), and fighting against “Marxist criminals and their Jewish intellectual instigators.”

Dimitrov recorded the humiliation of being handcuffed by order of the investigating magistrate on 5 April 1933 and his almost five-month struggle to have the manacles removed. Thus fettered, he continued recording various events, confrontations with the witnesses, the receipt of letters and parcels, correspondence and meetings with his uncooperative lawyers (“Official counsel for the defense = saboteur of the defense!”), and letters to and from the investigating magistrates, various relatives, including his sister Yelena Dimitrova in Moscow, and sister Magdalina Bariimova and mother, Parashkeva, in Sofia, various German friends, journalists, and foreign Communists, notably the writer Henri Barbusse and Jacques Do-riot; the latter, ironically, later became the leader of a French fascist fac-

Tion. It was during the early months of uncertainty in detention that he learned about the death of his wife Ljubica IvoSevici-Dimitrova, who committed suicide in Moscow on 27 May 1933. The nature of his relationship with Any Kruger, a frequent correspondent (15 August 1933: “‘engagement announcement’—she made it herself! Oh, poor, dumb Any!”), and her daughters is not clear. From August on, he corresponded with Rosa Fleischmann, a Sudeten Communist, who became his second wife.

Dimitrov was transported to Leipzig on i8 September 1933 for the trial proceedings that began on 21 September. Portions of the trial that was held in Berlin, from io October to i8 November, included the testimony of such Nazi chieftains as Goring and Goebbels, with whom Dimitrov clashed dramatically. The trial was concluded on 23 December 1933 in Leipzig with the acquittal of Dimitrov, his two Communist Bulgarian fellow defendants, Blagoi Popov and Vasil Tanev, and the German Communist Ernst Torgler. But unlike the other accused Communists, who defended themselves, Dimitrov turned the trial into an attack on Nazism. (Principal defendant Marinus van der Lubbe was condemned to death and later executed.) During the trial and after, he had meetings with his mother and sister Magdalina, who came to visit him from Bulgaria, and he was encouraged by various defense efforts. Kept in protective custody after the verdict, Dimitrov attended the 1933 Protestant and Catholic Christmas services after his acquittal (“If I were a believer, I would definitely be Prot[estant] rather than Cathol[ic]”) but soon had to contend with the prolongation of his detention, for Bulgaria refused to acknowledge his citizenship. Finally, on 15 February 1934 the USSR granted citizenship to all three Bulgarian veterans of the Leipzig trial. Deported from Germany on 17 February, they reached Moscow the same evening, to official greetings.

The excerpts that follow contain only a few fragments that record Dimitrov’s changing moods during the ordeal.—i. b.