16 September 2015, 11:00 h, National Museum of Military History, Sofia
The National Museum of Military History and The Atlantic Club of Bulgaria organized a donation ceremony to mark the 25th Anniversary of the organized Pro-Atlantic movement in New Europe, conceived in the Bulgarian Parliament in 1990.
The ceremony involved the donation of the Atlantic Trabant – the Bulgarian automobile, first shown in 1991 by CNN, when it was used by its owner Dr. Solomon Passy for “kidnapping” then NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner. Later, some of the most remarkable modern celebrities peacefully rode in the vehicle, and it even received the blessing of Pope John Paul II in 2002, as a symbol of the Euro-Atlantic orientation of Bulgaria.
With the conclusion of the ceremony, the cardboard vehicle – a defining feature of Communist reality before 1989, later turned into a symbol of the striving of the Bulgarian Atlanticists for unity with the West, became part of the exposition of the National Museum of Military History – the first museum in the country to represent the Bulgarian path towards NATO.
A special guest to the event was H.E. Roderick Moore, chargé d’affaires of the US Embassy in Sofia, who in 1990 became a godfather and later an honourable director of The Atlantic Club of Bulgaria – the only national Pro-Atlantic organization ever operating on the territory of the Warsaw Pact.