Bulgarian prosecutors investigate hate crime over posters of Nazi general

The District Prosecutor’s Office in the Bulgarian town of Kyustendil has begun an investigation in connection with hate crimes after posters were put up depicting a Second World War German general and an invitation to a meeting.

The posters showed Ferdinand Schörner in military uniform with an inscription “Heroes of the Second World War 1941-1945” and an invitation to a meeting in a community cultural centre in Kyustendil on June 6, a statement by Bulgaria’s Prosecutor’s Office on June 7 said.

Schörner was a general, later field marshal, in the Wehrmacht, and was the last commander-in-chief of Hitler’s army. After the war, Schörner was convicted in the Soviet Union and West Germany of war crimes and was imprisoned in the USSR and later in East Germany and West Germany.

The Prosecutor’s Office said it had opened an investigation under the Penal Code, for incitement to discrimination and hatred based on race, nationality or ethnicity.

A public prosecutor from the District Prosecutor’s Office in Kyustendil had been notified after the posters were seen, and urgent pre-trial proceedings initiated, the statement said.

Material evidence, including the posters, had been seized and the mayor of Kyustendil had banned the planned meeting. Search-and-seizure had been carried out at the cultural centre. Prosecutors were analysing the evidence in terms of the Penal Code, according to the statement.

(Photo: Schörner, centre, in Bulgaria in 1941: Bundesarchiv)

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