Fourteen years have passed since the victory of the Agreement in the First World War. New borders have been drawn regardless of the ethnicity of the population in large areas of Europe. A number of treaties have been concluded to respect the rights of ethnic minorities, whose destiny is to be under the rule of the victorious states. The year is 1933 - a great French writer and public figure, a great friend of the Serbian people, nurtured and convinced of the ideals of freedom, equality and brotherhood, embarks on a tour of the Balkans to see with his own eyes the realized ideals of the French Republic.
One of the stops of Henri Posey is Sofia. At that time it was widely rumored that the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was preparing to occupy Bulgaria. Pozi walks near the church of St. Sophia and the tomb of Ivan Vazov. He is suddenly stopped by an elderly man, an Orthodox priest, and points to the tomb of the national poet.
"If they do that, sir, the stones themselves, the bones of our dead sons will rise to drive them away!"
Monsieur Posey's journey will confront him with the real situation in the Balkans, shake his notions of inhumanity and lawlessness, and make him write the horrifying story of the fate of the Bulgarians under Serbian rule in Macedonia - "War Returns." The ideals of the French Republic, which he said Serbs and French fought in during World War I, turned out to be an illusion. In the name of historical truth, he believes that it is right for a wide circle of the European public to touch the painful and suffering fates of Bulgarians in Macedonia who were killed, raped, mutilated, tortured and humiliated by Serbs just because they are Bulgarians.
The border is passed through villages, on one side of the street the houses are in Serbia, on the other - in Bulgaria. The border has even been crossed at home - one room in Serbia, the other in Bulgaria. The border has even been crossed through graves - one part in Serbia, the other - in Bulgaria. But even that is not enough - the fear of the Serbs from Bulgaria is so great that with the corvee of the Bulgarian population a huge wire fence was built, and behind the fence - bunkers, machine gun nests, posts, wolf pits. Wolf pits have been dug directly into the graves. Bulgarian mothers with black headscarves kneel in front of the fence to pray for the souls of their children. Families remain separated - a child by a mother, a brother by a sister, a man by a woman. Serbs shoot "meat" at anyone who approaches the fence. In August 1931, a twelve-year-old Bulgarian girl went to the wire mesh to wave to her mother - his parents had fled to Bulgaria six years ago. The moment the little girl happily greets her mother, a Serbian machine gun kills him on the spot. The child's body was left for four days in 40 degree heat, no one dared to go and bury him in a Christian way.
In Sofia, Henri Posy met with Dr. Konstantin Stanishev, Chairman of the National Committee of the Union of Macedonian Charitable Brotherhoods, who informed the Frenchman about the following events: Mitreva refused to reveal where their husbands had fled and were beaten by Serbian guards, and parts of their bodies were gassed and set on fire. Miladina Tacheva, a 16-year-old girl from the village of Dobrevo, was convicted of singing a Bulgarian song. She was stripped naked and beaten with a whip, after which she was raped by seven Serbian guards. In Kachanik, Eftim Atanasov, accused of hiding IMRO activists, was beaten and crucified. In Yastremnik, Konstantin Damyanov, Ivan Angelov, Georgi Stoychev, Ilinka Ivancheva, Mita Dimitrieva, Mirsa Velinova were beaten to death in front of all their neighbors after being accused of aiding the IMRO. This happened in the presence of the villain Zika Lazic, then head of Public Security in Vardarska Banovina, then because of his "merits" he became Minister of the Interior of the Kingdom. "
And he concludes with the following sorrowful, rhetorical question: "What would you call your, the French public, such acts if they were committed during the German occupation of Alsace and Lorraine?"
The facts presented by Dr. Stanishev were confirmed during the Frenchman's tour of Macedonia by eyewitnesses. On the territory of today's Northern Macedonia, Pozi travels and receives direct impressions from the rule of the Vardar Banovina, as this part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is called. And where are the Macedonians in this kingdom?
Fully aware of the Bulgarian character of the population in the area, the Serbs send their most cruel administrators and police officers. Significant military force is concentrated in the area, and Serbian clerics have been sent. The military cemeteries of the Bulgarian soldiers were erased and desecrated, the Bulgarian schools were closed, the inscriptions in Bulgarian in the churches were erased, the Bulgarian clergy were expelled, a large amount of material and cultural wealth was destroyed.
The Bulgarian language is banned for fear of the most severe punishment. Bulgarians are not allowed to bear their names - they are forced to put Serbian endings on their surnames.
Henri Posey also describes the following incident in Bitola. In the center of the city, he walks when he hears shouts and screams from a nearby school. It is located a hundred meters from the city police station. Six boys are tied to the ranks, and their Serbian teachers kick them and beat them with the line. The boys are crying in pain and the teachers are shouting:
- Dirty Bulgarian! Macedonian pig! I will teach you Serbian!
In another case, a little girl was accused of speaking to her boyfriend in Bulgarian and was beaten while his cross and legs were covered with wounds. His parents have been warned that if their child is absent from school, the punishment will be repeated. Here are the words of this girl's father to Pose:
"Sir, you have seen how our children are treated. What they do with children, they do with everyone. A Macedonian woman who enters the police station or a gendarmerie is greeted as a prostitute; a Macedonian trader who lends money to a Serbian official never receives his money, and if he advertises his claim, he is ruined in advance; our peasants bend under the burden of taxes, and if they are one day late in paying them, they are thrown out into the street. "
Perhaps the most shocking part of Pozi's story is that some of the Serbian police and gendarmerie stationed in Macedonia are not married. Many of the Bulgarian men have joined the IMRO and their wives are alone.
Serbs simply like Bulgarian women left alone, and when they answer that they are already married, Serbian priests announce that they are already divorced. They then began beating them until they agreed to marry Serbs.
A few years after such an incident, Henri Posey passes through such a village and sees a Bulgarian woman, forcibly married to a Serb, watching her son from this marriage play in the street. She is very gentle with the boy, despite the circumstances. The Frenchman's companion informs him of what happened to this woman. He, with the help of his companion, tells her about his amazement at this tenderness. Staring straight ahead, as if without hearing or seeing him, the mysteriously smiling, proud Bulgarian answered as follows:
"Tell him I want my son to love me so much that I myself, alive or dead, on the day of our liberation, point the bullet of his rifle where it should."
Every attempt of the Bulgarians to defend the honor of their personality, of their families, almost always ends in torture or death. In Skopje, an uncle rescued his 17-year-old niece from the hands of a Serbian police chief, disappears without a trace - he was thrown into Vardar after being shot in the abdomen. The girl's friend, who helps her uncle, has been tortured by Serbs for days. Bulgarians in Macedonia are subjected to a barbaric regime that has nothing to do with human values and morals. They have become disenfranchised, victims of Serbian arbitrariness. Needless to say, there are no judicial investigations, trials and convictions for these atrocities. Human life in Macedonia under Serbian rule is lived at the mercy of "Orthodox" Serbs.
Serbian authorities face masculine resistance from the IMRO. Under the leadership of Todor Alexandrov and Ivan (Vancho) Mihailov, the organization became a defender of the Bulgarians in Macedonia. Detachments slipped through the wire fence, carried out attacks and assassinations, and fought against numerous Serbian losses. Assassins carry out attacks and kill torturers of the Bulgarian people - suffice it to mention Mara Buneva, who shot Serbian prosecutor Velimir Prelic on the Stone Bridge in Skopje on January 13, 1928, for the assassination attempt on Zika Lazic, shot by Ivan Momcilov in Lazic's office in Bel on July 13 of the same year. Many of the Bulgarian guerrillas died in the struggle. Those captured were tortured in the most brutal way and killed without trial or sentence.
"War is back" contains the following words of a true European:
"And I say, I, the Frenchman who deeply loves Serbia and who has proved it enough for twenty years - I say with the feeling that my judgment expresses much less than it really is that the people we represent today in Macedonia The current masters of Yugoslavia, who are officials, judges, priests or policemen, are tarnishing their country. "
And more: "Materially and morally enslaved are oppressed, robbed, tortured beyond any imagination. No opportunity for them to seek justice, no help, no protection for anyone, whatever their social status, gender, age. In Macedonia, they confiscate, imprison, torture, kill legally, systematically, peacefully, brutally. "
"War Returns" was published in 1934, and was published in Europe under the name "Black hand over Europe". Henri Posi was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Serbian court for his book. The book is an icy shower for any normal person, regardless of nationality. The blood in the veins freezes and the hair stands on end as one reads it. A homage to the martyrs who defended their right to call themselves Bulgarians in Macedonia.
Северна Македонија
Originally Posted by Crn Volk
A good mix of ethnicitiesA Macedonian for me too, just like Johnny who is part Serb. He is a good Macedonian nonetheless
Reply With Quote
Canada
United States
Bookmarks