The sacrifice altar near Veles. The fate of the Popgyorchev family

The mass execution without trial and conviction of people with a pronounced Bulgarian self-awareness in January 1945 in the vicinity of the town of Veles was one of the emblematic murders in the course of the wave of repressions in Vardar Macedonia, known as the Macedonian Bloody Christmas. The tragic event unfolded against the backdrop of the newly established Macedonian Unit as part of Tito’s (communist) Yugoslavia. Based on the author’s personal observations, the article follows the fate of one of the Veles families, which was directly affected by this atrocity. Along with the personal tragedy, the emphasis is placed on the ideological ‘evolution’ that the heirs of the victims have been forced to demonstrate with each subsequent generation in order to fit into the Yugoslav communist and post-Yugoslav (North-) Macedonian society. These processes have gone through the inevitable smaller or larger compromises, naturally reaching a conformism that is perceived as a choice and in its final stage: to a (most likely) final disconnection from their Bulgarian roots.