Liliana Nikolova Dimitrova

(pseudonym, Blaga). Born July 17, 1918, in Istanbul; died June 27, 1944, in Plovdiv. Active participant in the Bulgarian revolutionary youth movement. National heroine of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria.

Dimitrova, the daughter of a teacher, joined the League of Young Workers in 1937. As a law student at the University of Sofia, she proselytized revolutionary propaganda among the students on assignment from the league. She subsequently became a leader of the Bulgarian People’s Union of Students. In 1939, Dimitrova joined the Communist Party of Bulgaria and in 1940 participated in the strike of tobacco and textile workers. Dimitrova’s expulsion from the city in 1938 and 1940 on charges of revolutionary activity forced her underground in 1941. She served as secretary of the Sofia regional committee of the League of Young Workers from 1941 to 1943 and became a member of its central committee in 1942. In June 1942, Dimitrova was imprisoned in a concentration camp; she escaped shortly afterward. She began work with the Plovdiv regional committee of the league in early 1944 but was killed later that year in a skirmish with the police.