Интересна статия за България...

Няма няма и се появи нещо в американските издания за милата ни родина. Та, малко копи и пейст:
NY Times
Предварително се извинявам, че съм малко пияна, но както и да е.

Накратко, историята е следната-2ма влюбени се опитали да избягат от съветския блок през Студената война като решили да пробват през България към Гърция, защото им се видяло по-малко рисковано и Българите били по-симпатизиращи. Не се усетили обаче, че не са единствените и съответно службите са били затегнали граничния контрол. И ги хванали на границата, простреляли приятелката му на човека, него го понахапали малко кучета и ги осъдили на по 2 години затвор (което на мен ми се вижда странно, все пак, защо не са ги разстреляли като в другите случаи, за които се говори) и после Западна Германия ги откупила (още по-странно, в смисъл, защо и е га до прави?) и случайно попаднали на проучване изследващи хората/германци/ умряли при разни злоуполуки в България по време на Студената Война. И така. Толкова от мен за превода. Прочетете сами останалото. (Съжалявам за тези, които не обичат да четат на английски, но за мен е очевидно че в наше време английският е задължителен, на който не му изнася-на палатка. А и виното малко ми мъти мозъка :Р)

MUNICH — Two dangling strands of barbed wire have haunted Olaf Hetze for over a quarter century, since his failed attempt to escape from the Communist bloc, not by going over the Berlin Wall but around it by a little-known route through Bulgaria.

Mr. Hetze still believes that he and his girlfriend, Barbara Hille, might have made it if he had managed to cover their tracks better, trimming the loose ends after cutting the top wire of a border fence. If he had, Mr. Hetze said in an interview at his home in Munich earlier this year, he might never have seen the shooting stars of tracer bullets arcing across the night sky, or had to watch his girlfriend twist in the air and fall to the ground, blood rushing out of a life-threatening wound to her shoulder.

But the dangling wire was far from the only reason they failed.

Thanks to the work of a dedicated German researcher, the full extent of the escape attempts through Bulgaria, and the danger, is just now coming to light. At least 4,500 people tried to escape over the Bulgarian border during the cold war, estimated the researcher, Stefan Appelius, a professor of political science at Oldenburg University. Of those, he believes that at least 100 were killed, but no official investigation has ever been undertaken.

Интересното е, че в началото има един много сладък пасаж за България.
Olaf and Barbara Hetze, now married with two grown sons, had decided their escape would be easier away from the attention of the security forces in their native East Germany. They would make their getaway in Bulgaria, a choice vacation destination in the east, with sunny Black Sea beaches and breathtaking mountain scenery, where they hoped to cross into non-Communist Greece

“They had the southern mentality,” Mr. Hetze recalled. “Everything seemed more relaxed.” And technologically, he said, Bulgaria’s border controls were “nowhere near” as sophisticated as Germany’s.
И после продължават не толкова сладко:

What Olaf Hetze and Barbara Hille could not have known is that thousands of their East German compatriots had the same thought. And the Bulgarian government, with the active engagement of the East German secret police, known as the Stasi, was ready to defend its borders.

Mr. Appelius’s investigation of escapes through Bulgaria, described by experts as previously all but undocumented, is trailblazing and almost entirely self-financed. Hans-Hermann Hertle, who leads research into deaths along the Berlin Wall at the Center for Research on Contemporary History in Potsdam, said that he was impressed with Mr. Appelius’s work and that the center hoped to cooperate with him on Bulgaria once their study of the wall was complete.

The stories he uncovered are harrowing. For instance, a young couple from Leipzig were killed in 1975 by a tremendous hail of bullets, the man shot 37 times and the woman 25 times, all at close range. The last known fatality, 19-year-old Michael Weber, was killed on July 7, 1989, barely four months before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Helped by volunteers in Bulgaria but stymied, Mr. Appelius said, by the reluctance of authorities there to dig up unflattering history, he has found concrete evidence of 845 such escape attempts, including 18 fatalities where he has been able to clearly document the identities of the victims. Mr. Appelius said he based his estimate of more than 100 fatalities and 4,500 attempted crossings in part on interviews with Bulgarian pathologists and former border guards.

Mr. Appelius estimated that 160 people made it to the West.

By comparison, the research center in Potsdam says that 134 people were killed trying to escape at the Berlin Wall, though the research is continuing and that figure is contested by those who say it should be higher. Over all, experts say, more than 1,000 people died trying to flee over the East German border.

Нататък прочетете от линка (който противно на очакваното се намира в началото :) ).

Та това, което аз се чудя, това каква реклама е за страната ни. В смисъл, американците силно казано знаят къде е България, пък тука пише за някакви сини плажове и не знам си какво. От друга страна, някак не се споменава какво съм и правели на другите дезертьори на другите граници на блока, което изглежда малко твърде удобно. Все пак, не сме имали много избор тогава. Никой не е имал. Пък хората дори са живи. Което мен ме изумява. Може би просто са попаднали на симпатични граничари...
П.С. Не ми се сърдете на тона, но в момента ми е трудно да бъда по-мелодраматична. Като изтрезнея може пак да пробвам :) Но статията си я бива. А и както казват няма лоша реклама.