Client story
Client's Story
Where they started
The client had Bulgarian roots through an ancestor, but proving them through standard channels proved impossible: civil documents - birth certificates and records - had not been preserved due to the passage of time and the upheavals of the century. No evidence of the ancestor's descent was found in standard civil archives.
Why the standard route did not work
The client had almost resigned himself to the fact that without civil records the matter was hopeless. However, an important biographical detail about the ancestor emerged in conversation: he had served in the military and was conscripted into military service. This seemingly incidental detail proved to be the key.
What BRIDGES had to solve
The fact is that the military maintained records of its personnel with particular precision: conscription lists, service records, and personal military files often documented the conscript's origin, place of birth, and nationality. Military archives frequently preserve information that is lost in civil archives and may contain direct evidence of an ancestor's Bulgarian descent.
Why a standard answer would not do
The client came to BRIDGES to pursue this alternative but viable approach: access military archives, locate in the ancestor's conscription and service records evidence of his Bulgarian descent, and build a comprehensive evidentiary foundation from this material.
There were no civil records of my ancestor left, and I thought there was nothing to prove my roots with. Igor latched onto a detail I hadn't considered significant: the ancestor had served in the military. It turned out the military kept records more meticulously than the civilian authorities - and his conscription documents contained evidence of Bulgarian descent. We built a case from this, and I received a Bulgarian EU passport. I would never have thought that army archives would prove my roots.
