On September 5, 1943, Boris III - the Unifier Tsar - was buried in the Rila Monastery.
The grave of Tsar Boris III the Unifier is located in the main temple of the Rila Monastery. Today, only his heart is buried here, discovered during an examination of the Tsar's destroyed second grave in the Vrana Palace, where he was reburied in 1946, recalls "Pleven Press".
Tsar Boris III died unexpectedly of a heart attack after a short illness at 4:22 p.m. on August 28, 1943, shortly after returning from a visit to Hitler.
According to the diary of the German attaché in Sofia at the time, Colonel von Schönebeck, the two German doctors who cared for the Tsar – Seitz and toxicologist Hans Eppinger believed that Boris died from the same poison that Dr. Eppinger had found two years earlier in the autopsy of Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas - it acts for weeks, causing spots on the skin.
Rumors about the death of Boris III suggest that the tsar was poisoned on the orders of Hitler, who was greatly irritated after his last meeting with the Bulgarian ruler because of his refusal to hand over the Bulgarian Jews and send troops against the USSR. According to Prime Minister Prof. Bogdan Filov, however, in their last meeting Hitler and Boris III discussed only sending additional Bulgarian troops to the Western Balkans, but not against the USSR. His son Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha does not deny this version, but indicates as probable the hypothesis that the USSR also had an interest in the tsar's death, and in this case the intervention of the NKVD is possible. Princess Maria Luisa of Bulgaria stated in an interview that she had no definitive version of what had happened, but that she was convinced that her father was not poisoned by the Nazis or the British, but by the East.
In his personal diary, Joseph Goebbels expressed doubts that the Italian government, represented by Prime Minister Pietro Badoglio, was responsible for the death of Boris III. According to Goebbels, Hitler was convinced that the Italian royal court was the organizer of the poisoning of Boris III, since Princess Mafalda of Savoy, sister of Joanna of Bulgaria, was on a visit to Bulgaria four weeks before the monarch's death. According to Goebbels' testimony, Mafalda of Savoy's visit roughly coincided in time with the events of July 25, 1943. – the overthrow of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, supported by Victor Emmanuel III, father of Joanna of Bulgaria.
After a five-day pilgrimage to the cathedral “St. Alexander Nevsky“, on September 5, the funeral procession reached the Rila Monastery, where he was buried in the monastery church.
A crowd sends off the funeral train with the body of Tsar Boris III, September 1943.
He is succeeded on the throne by his infant son Tsar Simeon II, on whose behalf the regency council elected by the National Assembly governs – Prof. Bogdan Filov, Prince Kiril and Lieutenant General Nikola Mihov until the coup of September 9, 1944, when the last regency council was appointed by the communists, consisting of: Acad. Todor Pavlov, Prof. Venelin Ganev and Tsvyatko Boboshevski, who ruled until the establishment of a republican regime on September 15, 1946.
In 1946, by order of the communist rulers and an operation directly led by the then commandant of the People's Militia in Sofia Lev Glavinchev, his remains were exhumed and desecrated, his body was reburied in a small chapel in the park of the "Vrana" palace. In 1954, by order of Valko Chervenkov, this chapel was blown up and leveled, and the grave was destroyed.
On the left side of the grave is a carving made on October 10, 1943 by residents of the village of Osoy, Debar district, with the inscription:
“To his Tsar Liberator Boris III from grateful Macedonia.”
After November 10, 1989, a parliamentary commission led the search for the Tsar's remains, but only his heart was found, which was located in the burial place in the park of the “Vrana“ palace. It was reburied at the site of the restored grave in the Rila Monastery in 1993.