On September 10, 1944, the great Bulgarian public figure and journalist Danail Krapchev became a victim of communist terror.
He was killed by the communists in Gorna Jumaya under circumstances that are still unclear.
The reasons why he was persecuted for many years by the Moscow communists and their agents in Bulgaria were his great patriotism and strong articles against the communist terrorists and their Moscow masters in the pages of the newspaper ''Zora' ', of which he is the director and which he turned into the ''Bulgarian Times''
Titles such as ''Following the Broken Bolsheviks'', ''The Low Level of the Soviet Union'', ' ;'The weakest point of the Soviet Union'', ''Germany saved Europe from the new Genghis Khan'' etc. in his newspaper ''Dawn'' have caused the merciless hatred towards the notable publicist.
Twice before the coup on September 9, 1944. communist criminals tried to kill him on the order of the then illegal Politburo of the Central Committee of the BKP, which comrade Tsola Dragoycheva testified to in her memoirs.
First attempt failed. The kidnappers were spotted in time and caught. During the second attempt, Danail Krapchev was brutally hit on the head with a scimitar and barely survived.
On September 9, 1944, he was arrested by communist paramilitary forces. Killed under unknown circumstances on September 10, 1944 in the police station of Gorna Jumaya, which they seized. The killing is subsequently "legalized" with a verdict of the People's Court. In February 1994, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Bulgaria overturned the verdict.
Danail Krapchev was born in Prilep on December 15, 1880. In 1898, he graduated from the Thessaloniki Bulgarian Boys' High School, and in 1906, history at Sofia University.
In the same year, he began his journalistic activity in the weekly magazine "Macedonian-Odrina Review", after which he became an illegal reader of the Internal Macedonian-Odrina Revolutionary Organization.
In 1907, together with Peyo Yavorov and Vasil Paskov, they edited the newspaper "Ilinden". in Sofia. In the following year, 1908, he successively edited the newspaper "Fatherland" and the newspaper "Rodina" in Thessaloniki.
In the period 1909-1912 he published the newspaper "Vardar" in Sofia and successively renamed it to our other rivers "Mesta", "Struma", "Maritsa", "Bregalnitsa" in order to overcome its ban in Turkey.
In 1912, Danail Krapchev became a Chetnik again together with Yavorov, moving to Thessaloniki. In the same year, he edited the newspaper "Bulgarian". in Thessaloniki.
After the Inter-Allied War, he was the editor of the organ of the Democratic Party "Priaporets", published in Sofia. In the period 1915-1918, Danail Krapchev was a military correspondent for the newspapers "Military Notices", "Dobrudja" and "Ticket".
In 1919, he founded the independent information daily "Zora", one of the most authoritative and popular newspapers before the September 9 coup in 1944, of which he was director until the end of his life.
At the same time, he is the director-owner of the joint-stock companies "Bulgarian Press" and "Press".
He is a member of the Macedonian Scientific Institute.
After the coup of May 19, 1934, because of his democratic positions, he was imprisoned in Karlovo.
In April 1941, Prime Minister Bogdan Filov sent him on a mission to make contact with the Bulgarian Action Committees, which he wrote in his diary:
„The Tsar agreed to entrust Krapchev with the mission to Skopje. I immediately called Krapchev; he is for the accession of Macedonia to Bulgaria, not for autonomy.“
When the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany advanced towards Bulgaria, Krapchev announced his support for the German military offensive in Europe. In an article in the magazine "Zora" on March 6, 1941, he wrote:
„...the German army was not stopped by the armies of the great states opposing Germany, nor by the armies of the Little Entente, nor by the hundred divisions of the Balkan Entente, because the army of National Socialist Germany is a revolutionary army and that of a great nation, severely affected by the victors in the World War and strongly organized by Mr. Hitler and his associates after that... Why is Bulgaria of seven million people asked to stop the German people of eighty million in their drive to build a new Europe? Bulgaria is a victim, like Germany, of the winners of two decades ago and is waiting for the celebration of justice..."
With his publicism, Krapchev provoked the strong disapproval of the Communist Party. As early as 1942, his assassination was planned.
On March 23, 1943, he was followed by Ivan Burudzhiev and Zdravka Kyamileva, but they failed to do anything to him because they aroused the suspicion of the people he was traveling with, and they were arrested. During a search of Burudzhiev's apartment, a huge amount of money was found. He was sent to a concentration camp, but was released after 6 months. Another attempt to kill Danail Krapchev was made in April 1943: when he left the editorial office, he was attacked by people armed with pistols, but attacked him with scimitars.
He was saved by passers-by, among them the non-commissioned officer Hristo Ivanov Kalchev, and policemen who came; the attackers are surrounded and one is killed and the other commits suicide.
On July 21, 1944, an unsuccessful assassination attempt was carried out against him. He was arrested on September 10, 1944...