Ancheva, Liberty

Born December 26, 1912 in the village of Gevgeli. Mother was a housewife, father Mikhail Kostov Anchev was a teacher, and after moving to Sofia he became a printing worker and, together with progressive journalist Yosif Herbst, participated in the publication of the progressive newspaper ABV. In April 1925, he was arrested by the police and killed. A mother with three children was left without a livelihood, it was not easy to find a job, especially after everyone found out that her husband was a communist ^[3] .

As a result, S. Ancheva as a child got a job in a printing house - she submitted sheets to a flat-printing machine ^[2] .

In 1927, her mother was informed that it was possible to send the children of the fallen communists to the USSR through the Ministry of Natural Resources , where they would receive a profession and work, and if she agreed, the youngest daughter could be sent ^[3] .

After paperwork, in September 1927, as part of a group of 27 children under the age of 15, she was transported from Bulgaria through Austria to Germany. The children were accommodated in the Mopheim Children's Rest House in Elgersburg (Thuringia), which was sponsored by the Communist Party of Germany ^[3] . In Germany, she learned to speak German ^[2] .

At the end of April 1928, the children left for the USSR and arrived in Moscow, where they were distributed in several orphanages in accordance with age groups ^[3] . Freedom and two more Bulgarian girls ended up in the Timiryazev Youth House. While studying at school, she was accepted into pioneers, she participated in the first All-Union rally of pioneers in the Kremlin ^[2] .

A year and a half she worked as a student of a turner at the Samotochka machine-building plant (Moscow factory of grinding machines) ^[2] , then the Komsomol organization sent her to study at a work faculty. Having decided to become an engineer, in 1933 she entered the Moscow Machine Tool Institute , during her studies she participated in social, political and cultural work. In May 1938 she graduated from the institute, defended her thesis “Hydraulic Transmission of the Lathe” with honors, received the specialty of a machine tool engineer and was sent to the Krasny Proletary Machine Tool Plant in Moscow (where she was offered work in the plant’s design bureau) ^[2] , married for the Bulgarian political emigrant Ginho Georgiev Stoynova.

In 1938 - 1940, with her husband, she underwent special training in the RU of the Red Army and the RO of the Black Sea Fleet ^[1] , became a radio operator ^[2] .

On the morning of November 26, 1940, the sailing-motor schooner "Dolphin" took the scouts aboard and went to sea. On November 28, 1940 they landed them on a fishing motor boat on the Bulgarian coast near Shabla (1 km south of the village of Karapchi) with Romanian documents in fictitious names ("Petr Vladimirov Mirchev" and "Milka Petrova Vladimirova") and the legend of immigrants who decided to leave Romania and move to South Dobrudja ^[2] .

Scouts successfully arrived in Dobrich , registered at the police station and settled in a rented apartment on Tsar Koloyan Street ^[2] . It took time to find parts for the assembly of the radio transmitter, it turned out to be difficult, because the police monitored such goods, but the Bulgarian Air Force officer Mikhail Yanev Andreev managed to get the details. The transmitter was assembled and communication was established ^[3] . On February 15, 1941, the first radiogram was sent. In addition to working on the transmitter, S. Ancheva worked as a courier and independently collected intelligence information (in particular, about wounded German soldiers who arrived for treatment in Bulgaria from the Eastern Front) ^[2] .

In the future, other people gathered for information - Brother Guino Stoynova Stoyko Stoynov with his wife Zara, Communist Kolo Gaynardzhiev, owner of the workshop on repairing and sewing shoes in Dobrich, Vasil Karagozov, Vasil and Kichka Antonova, and others, a participant in the strike on the steamboat Burgas. In Sofia, S. Ancheva met with her mother ^[3] .

After the German attack on the USSR, the range of issues on which information should be collected expanded significantly, the situation in the country was complicated, the radio contacted daily ^[3] .

On May 22, 1942, the group began work from Plovdiv - it was the second most populated city in the country, a large railway junction and the main Luftwaffe air base in Bulgaria. To legalize, Ginho opened a vegetable shop ^[2] , where Ginho and Mikhail Andreev became traders of fodder, fruits and vegetables, and thus received permission to travel around the country ^[3] .

Based on the radiograms transmitted by the group by the Soviet armed forces on the Black Sea, several transports with weapons and cargo for the Eastern Front were sunk, leaving the Bulgarian ports ^[1] .

On February 20, 1943, the transmitter in Varna was discovered by a German direction finder and disclosed, a few days later Zara and Stoyko Georgiev were arrested during a radio communication session ^[3] , the transmitter, receiver and radiograms were at the disposal of the police, an ambush was left at their place of residence ^[2] . Arriving in Varna, Ancheva found signs of arrest, escaped surveillance, returned to Plovdiv and informed her husband about the failure, they destroyed the transmitter and codes, after which her husband left for Sofia, and she remained and was arrested the same day ^[3] .

After three days of interrogation in Plovdiv, Ancheva was transferred to Varna (for a confrontation with Zara Stoycheva), and then to Shumen prison ^[2] .

Guinho went into an illegal position, tracked down the party underground, carried out the tasks of the Central Committee of the BRP, and in the spring of 1944 he was sent from Sofia to the Radom partisan detachment ^[2] . On May 12, 1944, during the transition to Rila (in the 1st Sofia partisan brigade), a group of partisans was surrounded in the village of Debeli-Lak of the Radomir okoliya, 5 partisans were killed in a battle with the police and gendarmerie (Guinho Stoinov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the RMS Svilen Rusev and three other partisans) ^[3] .

On June 16, 1943, a Shumen military field court examined the case of six arrested participants (Mikhail Andreev, Zara Georgieva, S. Ancheva were sentenced to death, Diras Bedros Kanonyan - for 15 years, Stoyko Georgiev - to two years in prison, Vasil Karagozov was released because his guilt was not proven) ^[3] . Enforcing the sentence was immediately impossible, because the day of the trial coincided with the birthday of the king’s son, Prince Simeon ^[2] . Since there was no separate death row in the Shumen prison’s female department, Zara Stoynova and Liberty Ancheva were transferred to Sofia Central Prison. In January 1944, after the bombing of Sofia, one of the bombs fell into the prison building and the women prisoners were transferred to Sliven prison ^{[3] [4]} .

On the night of September 7-8, 1944, partisans, with the support of the population, took control of the prison building and released the arrested, a day later, by passing vehicles, S. Ancheva reached Sofia, where she met with the Soviet military command ^{[3] [2]} .

After the war, she became the first female engineer in Bulgaria, from 1944 to 1952 she worked in the specialty at the Georgi Dimitrov plant, in 1952-1972 she headed the department in the Ministry of Railways of the NRB ^[2] .

Died in 1999.

• Order of Lenin ^[2] (1966)
• Hero of Socialist Labor (NRB) ^[2]
• order "George Dimitrov" ^[2] (1970)