In front of the altar of the metropolitan Catholic cathedral of St. Joseph ‎the contents of three notebooks, written in the painstaking handwriting ‎of a political prisoner, finally took on a life of their own. ‎‎"The Apostle - ‎a tragedy in five acts" by Georgi Zarkin,  a book which was born half a ‎century ago in a prison cell in the Staza Zagora prison, has now reached ‎its readers thanks to Father Paolo Cortesi - a seeker of the truth, a ‎spreader of stories of steadfastness to the very end and guardian of the ‎memory of the victims of the communist regime.‎

‎"This book, written in 1970, was taken out of prison, because the ‎prison administration did not find in it the necessary literary ‎qualities and merits”, says the son of its author, Lachezar Zarkin. “It ‎was kept for a very long time as a precious relic so that it can find its ‎spiritual place. This is happening precisely in the year in which we ‎celebrate the 150th anniversary of the hanging of the Bulgarian apostle of ‎freedom Vasil Levski."‎

With the help of the Catholic Church, Lachezar Zarkin managed to ‎publish part of his father's prison work - the novel "Honor", the ‎documentary series "Volcano" about the essence of Todor Zhivkov's ‎dictatorial regime, the poetry collections "Beyond the Line" and "From ‎the temple of the self-doomed”. In the preface to `The Apostle”, written ‎in verse in the style of Shakespeare and at an exceptionally good level, ‎according to literary critics, Father Paolo Cortesi notes: "Only one worthy ‎Bulgarian who experiences the same fate as Levski and carries in his ‎heart the same dream of a radical and positive change not only for ‎yourself, but for everyone, can tell us about this tragedy and this worthy ‎person is Georgi Zarkin."‎

‎"He was born on March 3, 1940 in the village of Beli Iskar /65 km ‎south of Sofia," says Lachezar Zarkin, outlining the life story of his ‎father. “His father was killed without trial and sentence in the last days ‎of September 1944, when 68 people from Samokov municipality were ‎thrown into the 138-meter-deep Black Rock abyss. And as a child of a ‎murdered man, he was already marked. However, there is one talent in ‎him - according to the stories of my aunts and uncles, every free minute ‎he would stand aside where there was light and constantly read or write. ‎After the agricultural technical school, he graduated in cinematography ‎and became a photojournalist in the newspaper "Agricultural Banner". ‎In his capacity as a journalist, he met the person in charge of dams and ‎reservoirs, Gen. Ivan Todorov-Gorunya and learned from him about the ‎planned coup d'état. At the beginning of 1966, Georgi Zarkin created a ‎group of four people who wrote leaflets calling for armed struggle and the ‎overthrowing of Todor Zhivkov's regime, but he was arrested, tried, ‎beaten. In prison, he became a firm democrat and an opponent of the ‎totalitarian communist regime.”‎

At the premiere of The Apostle, Father Paolo Cortesi drew a parallel ‎between the book's hero Vasil Levski and its author Georgi Zarkin - one ‎lived during the "Ottoman foreign rule", the other during the ‎‎"communist fraternal slavery", but both sacrificed themselves the name ‎of the holiest of ideals.‎

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‎"They were persecuted, they were deprived of their freedom, they ‎became victims of this slavery," says the priest from the Nativity of the ‎Blessed Virgin Mary church in Belene. “In his prison cell, Georgi Zarkin ‎experiences the same thirst for freedom that Levski experiences, the ‎same compassion for his people, the same dreams for oppression to be ‎abolished and for everyone to live free together, building their history in ‎freedom and respect. ‎Together with the suffering people, they feel the ‎thirst for freedom and ‎do their part, they do not give up.”‎

Thus, Georgi Zarkov, sentenced to a strict regime, spent 11 years and 6 ‎months in prison, where he died a violent death from suffocation with ‎pillows and beating with rubber hoses. During all this time, he remained ‎faithful to both his civic duty and his vocation as a creator. On July 15, ‎‎1968, while the Czechoslovak people were trying to push back the ‎Soviet occupation troops, Zarkin sent a letter of protest to Todor ‎Zhivkov, in which he wrote that "our country is heading for a moral and ‎strategic catastrophe", that "a policy against the people is being waged", ‎that "Bulgaria has become Russia's experimental base". ‎

‎"Georgi Zarkin not only dared (to tell the truth about Russia's role at that ‎time - note ed.), but he did it in written form and went on a 28-day ‎hunger strike in protest against the invasion of the troops of the Warsaw ‎Pact in Czechoslovakia, which crushed the Prague Spring with weapons ‎and war machines”, says Lachezar Zarkin. “He spent his hunger strike in ‎the prison cell in horrifying conditions - one wooden board, one bucket for ‎a toilet and one grid of the cell, on which a metal sheet with holes ‎drilled in it was placed to allow air to enter. This is what the strict regime ‎in the prison at the time was.”‎

On August 6, 1977, a black Volga with three State Security officers ‎stopped in front of the Pazardzhik prison, where Georgi Zarkin was ‎transferred. The time had come to carry out the death sentence issued by ‎the Deputy Interior Minister Gen. Grigor Shopov regarding the protest ‎letter to Todor Zhivkov. The execution took place a day later - on the ‎eve of the first writer's congress in Sofia, due to the fear of the secret ‎services that foreign participants may request a meeting with him and ‎personally hear about the experienced physical torture and mental ‎harassment. Moreover, his poems, taken outside the country by released ‎prisoners, are already being read on Radio Free Europe and writers, ‎poets and journalists had voiced their desire to support him. ‎

Although 33 years have passed since the fall of the Communist regime, ‎Bulgarian society continues to get to know individuals who did not bow ‎their head to the obscurantist regime and lived and worked in ‎opposition to the patterns of the time. "It is high time that state ‎institutions in Bulgaria take up the publishing and popularization of this ‎kind of valuable artistic works and the change of the value system," says ‎Lachezar Zarkin.‎